Transparency In Food Safety

Posted in Our Blog on August 9, 2011

The Louisiana Department of Health & Hospitals recently launched a website focused on cleanliness and sanitation in our food industry. “Eat Safe Louisiana” is its tag, and as John Pope wrote today in The Times-Picayune in his write-up of the new site:

“Instead of evaluating the products on the plate, the website lets diners know about the cleanliness of the environments in which these dishes are created – the conditions of the sinks and garbage receptacles, for instance, as well as the temperature of the dishwashers and freezers, the status of the plumbing and employee compliance with hand-washing regulations.” (read the complete article here)

The principal goal of the site is to provide consumers with information to which they would not normally have easy access: How sanitary their favorite restaurants and stores are. The web site’s most useful feature is its interactive database of more than 34,000 Louisiana food establishments and records of their sanitation inspections. The user also has access to a PDF of each sanitation report. [For some reason, this feature is buried on the web site… you can go to it directly by clicking HERE or find it at the bottom of the “For Consumers” section.]

Transparency here is key. We are blessed to live in an era of almost limitless information. Sometimes this abundance of information can be intimidating, but when we get a very user-friendly tool such as Eat Safe Louisiana, we can make the best and most informed choices for ourselves and our loved ones.