Pizza dough in a garbage bag, and other food inspection details
By the numbers, a look at what we found in newly published food inspection reports
There are hundreds of new health inspection reports for the public to pore over on the Newfoundland and Labrador government's website.
The reports cover schools, nursing homes, hospitals and other institutional places where food is made and served. You can check them all out here, but to save you some time we've crunched a few of the numbers.
1
The number of times pizza dough was found stored inside a garbage bag. It happened at St. Peter's Elementary School in Mount Pearl, where the dough was immediately removed from the bag, with a warning from the inspector that "garbage bags are NOT food-grade material and have chemicals that will leach into the food products." (We don't know if any students reported that their pizza tasted like garbage.)
86
The number of food manufacturing facilities inspected.
3
The number of breweries included in that list.
32
The number of eating areas inspected by public health inside hospitals and health centres.
1
The number of critical issues found in the health centres during the most recent round of inspections. Eggs and sausages were not covered at the Western Memorial Regional Hospital cafeteria. The report notes that the problem was fixed before the inspector left.
12
Individual food preparation areas that are inspected at Memorial University.
7
The number of these found fully compliant during the most recent inspections.
5
The number of "non-critical" issues found. These are considered less urgent but do need to be fixed things like flaking paint, or a lack of a paper towel holder.
2
The number of critical issues found at various university-owned facilities, including no sanitizer for cleaning surfaces at the Offshore Safety and Survival Centre in Foxtrap and problems earlier identified with food not being kept at the right temperature in the Dining Hall at the main St. John's campus.
Unknown
The number of whole chickens that had to be thrown out last year when inspectors found them thawing on the counter at room temperature overnight. "All potentially hazardous foods must be thawed using an approved method," inspectors wrote in the report for the Ajagutak daycare in Hopedale.