City of Stamford Department of Health & Social Services Food Safey Training Program

Restaurants fail inspections daily throughout the country because of risk factor violations and poorly educated food handlers. CDC has estimated that each year 48 million people get sick, 128, 000 are hospitalized and 3,000 individuals die of foodborne disease. In the past year, the Stamford Health Department has received 82 food complaints and 42 confirmed illnesses reports. As of July 2013 there have been 158 failed restaurant inspections with 31 failing on the re-inspections. When establishments fail inspections, management can correct the problem, but not the underlying education behavioral pattern that caused the failure without repeated training and retention.

The Department has created a mandatory food training program for establishments that fail consecutive inspections or have a repeated pattern of pass and fail. The goal of this program is to increase public awareness on food handling procedures. We have nationally certified training inspectors on staff to provide oversight of the program. 

We have taken a proactive approach in developing a food program to review the following:

• Risk factors causing establishments to fail
• Walk through inspection of establishment with workers
• Hands on demonstrations of equipment and sanitizing setup

As of January 2014, 124 food handlers have received food safety training and since November 2013, a food test has been administered to 44 handlers observing a 15% increase in average scores from 63% pre-test to 78% post-test. Foodborne illness can be reduced by reinforcing food safety procedures with hands on training.