Abstract
Restaurants are a frequent setting for outbreaks and sporadic cases of Salmonella. The relationship among food safety management characteristics, compliance with procedures to reduce Salmonella-associated risk factors (as found during routine inspections), and the likelihood that an establishment has experienced a sporadic Salmonella case was assessed. Individual risk factor violations associated with Salmonella transmission pathways were identified by a literature review. Data from 546 routine inspection reports collected from July 2016 to June 2017, including 25 from restaurants that had experienced a sporadic case of Salmonella, were evaluated. In restaurants with certified food managers, there were fewer observations of Salmonella risk factor reduction procedures that were not in compliance. For establishments that had experienced sporadic cases of Salmonella, the person in charge at the time of an inspection was less likely to have been the establishment's official certified food manager of record (rate ratio = 0.4, 95% confidence interval = 0.2 to 0.8; P = 0.01), and there was increased likelihood of being found out of compliance for prevention of contamination by hands (rate ratio = 3.7, 95% confidence interval = 1.4 to 8.1; P = 0.001). The results of this study warrant future research on the dynamics of food safety management systems, the effect they have on risk factor violations cited on routine inspection results, and the risk for transmission of Salmonella. Analyzing routine inspection data as hazard surveillance may be useful to identify food establishments at a greater risk for transmitting Salmonella infections.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 339-343 |
Number of pages | 5 |
Journal | Journal of food protection |
Volume | 82 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The authors acknowledge the cooperation received from the Bloomington, Minnesota, Environmental Health Department, which assisted in the data collection used in this study. We thank and acknowledge Dr. Laura Le at the University of Minnesota for assistance with the data analysis. Additionally, we acknowledge and thank Dr. Kirk Smith at the Minnesota Department of Health and Dr. Fernando Sampedro at the University of Minnesota.
Publisher Copyright:
© International Association for Food Protection.
Keywords
- Certified food manager
- Food safety management
- Person in charge
- Routine inspections
- Third-party auditors