THUNDER BAY -- It's been a little more than five months since the District Health Unit introduced a public grading system for its food inspections.
The DineWise program awards letter grades to restaurants and other food service locations, based on what's found during regular inspections.
Restaurants start with an A-grade, and 100 points. For each infraction spotted by health inspectors, points are deducted, and the grade lowers for each successive infraction.
Grades must be displayed publicly, in a location easily visible to diners.
Facilities with lower grades are placed on an increased inspection schedule, with the aim of awarding a higher grade after food safety improvements are made.
Abby Mackie is with the District Health Unit and says in just half a year, food inspectors have already seen a big drop in major and critical infractions.
“Inspectors were running into about 30 infractions for every 100 inspections,” Mackie said.
“Since the Dinewise program that number is down to about six, so very positive results and we’ve seen the number of A-grades almost double just given the decrease in infractions.”
The District Health Unit says 84 per cent of local restaurants received an A-Grade, but they could not provide numbers or locations of which restaurants posted B, C or D grades.
Mackie says they are planning to develop a way to publish those grades on the Health Unit website.
(TBT News)
