Southern Maryland health departments charge for food inspection reports
If you’re curious whether your favorite restaurant was cited for keeping food at the wrong temperatures, obtaining food from an unapproved source or employees failing to properly wash their hands,
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If you’re curious whether your favorite restaurant was cited for keeping food at the wrong temperatures, obtaining food from an unapproved source or employees failing to properly wash their hands, it might cost you.
The Enterprise requested a year’s worth of food inspections from the St. Mary’s health department, equating to over 500 food service facilities and 2,700 pages of inspections. The health department responded with a bill for $1,240. The Enterprise declined to pay for that information.
Restaurants, groceries and other food venues are inspected one to three times per year, depending on the level of risk associated with how food is handled.
Some counties in Maryland make those records available online to view for free, while others do not. In Southern Maryland, one county is working to transfer to digital, one already has, and another has no plans to do so.
St. Mary's County:
Health officials in St. Mary’s said they are working to make those reports more accessible to the public.
“We don’t have the technology in place as of yet,” Dr. Meena Brewster, St. Mary’s health officer, said about making records available online.
Charles County:
However, the health officer in Charles County’s health department said they post its food inspection reports online when the public criticized the lack of availability on the department’s social media.
“We felt that transparency is important and sought a way to provide meaningful data to our county residents and visitors,” Lisa Laschalt, Charles County’s director of environmental health services, said in an email. “We hope to improve upon the information provided in the near future to include links to full inspection reports.”
Calvert County:
Calvert County residents will have to fill out a public records request, like St. Mary’s, if they want to find out if restaurant employees are washing their hands properly. Inspection reports are not posted on its website either and the department is “not currently” making efforts to do so, according to Calvert’s deputy health officer.
“Such digitization and automation are outside the scope of our current information technology and website capacity,” Champ Thomaskutty, Calvert’s deputy health officer, said.
Interesting the differences between the 3 counties.