I looked and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.
Lincoln Elementary School, in Twin Falls, Idaho, has several complaints about food safety violations, however, state health officials actually tipped off school officials before their so called “unannounced” inspection. As a result, no violations were found.
Current Idaho regulations state that food inspections must be “unannounced”, yet health inspectors for Idaho’s South Central Public Health District violated their own rules, warning Lincoln Elementary officials of the inspection, saying it was common “courtesy”: “We want to maintain a good partnership with the schools.”-Melody Bowyer, South Central Public Health District
That’s your taxpayer dollars at work! The whole idea of surprise inspections is to catch the food service off guard, to see how they really operate on a day to day bases. It’s even more important when you get several complaints from the taxpaying public!
But Idahoans should be concerned even more, because even with the “courtesy” warnings of inspections dozens of schools have failed inspections (according to a Times-News report)!
Another problem is school officials. Take Wendell School District, they hired a new food service director a month ago, but when asked by local media she revealed that she was not aware that the school had food safety violations in the recent past. She’s not concerned because: “Schools have to hold themselves to a higher standard. In my experience, that’s what I’ve seen and that’s what we’re going to do in Wendell.”-Michelle Shady
Parents don’t know who they can trust: “Knowing the schools are clean is important, it would be foolish to say otherwise, but I don’t know who to contact to make sure. I guess it’s one of those things you don’t talk about until a problem comes up.”-Jerry Evers, children attend Wendell High School
If you live in Idaho you can go here to find your Public Health District. There are links to each of the seven districts in Idaho. However, I found it hard to find the so called public food inspection reports alluded to in a Times-News article. In fact there is no standardized presentation of each of the seven health districts’ websites.
The Times-News (covering South Central Idaho, District 5) article said food inspections are to be unannounced, yet, on the Central Idaho (District 4) website they said only one unannounced inspection per year was required.
It’s the Central Idaho District 4 website that is the most helpful, as they do make access to their food inspections easy. You click on “Environmental Health”, then click on “Food”, then click on “Inspections”. You then get to a page that has links to recent District 4 inspection results. However, this is not possible on most of the other districts’ websites!!!
Southwest Idaho’s District 3 asks you to conduct a search by name or city, in order to find out inspection results.
Idaho’s Panhandle District 1 has a Quick Link titled “Restaurant Inspections” on the Environmental Health page, requiring a search by name or city.
For Districts 2 (North Central), 5 (South Central, so I wonder where the Times-News got their info), 6 (Southeastern) & 7 (Eastern) there were no links to local public food inspection reports under the “Environmental Health/Food” section.