With only five health inspectors at Northern Interior Environmental Health, Prince George restaurants aren't being inspected as frequently as required, even when there are concerns.
There are up to two-year spans in which restaurants designated with a hazard rating of moderate have not had follow-up inspections, according to the online reports available to the public.
Currently, there are five restaurants rated as moderate in the hazard ranking of low, moderate and high.
They are Burger King, 1023 Central St. W.; China Taste, 3601 Massey Dr.; Jumbo Restaurant, 2260 Hart Highway; Pan Am, 1535A Ogilvie St. S.; and Pho U & Me Restaurant, 1667 15th Ave.
Last week, when The Citizen contacted Northern Interior Environmental Health about the restaurant ratings, there were seven restaurants that were rated moderate.
Sushi Star, 102 - 3328 15th Ave., had a ranking of high on Nov. 16, 2016 with no follow up. Then it was updated to say the next two inspections were rated low on Nov. 18, 2016 and Dec. 13, 2016, with no inspection since.
Thanh Vu, 1778 Highway 97 S., got a moderate on May 25, 2016, then again on June 1, 2016 and then the update says it got a low rating on June 8, 2016, with no inspection since.
The Citizen scheduled a phone interview with Northern Interior Environmental Health on Monday at 10 a.m.
At 9:59 a.m. that morning, the site was updated.
"It's a huge gamut of work and we are very, very short staffed," said Neelam Hayer, team lead for Northern Interior Environmental Health, adding that it's the Ministry of Health who funds the staff.
"There is no shortage of work happening but definitely an overload of work on the current work force that we do have," Hayer added.
The agency works within Northern Health, covering Prince George, Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount. Environmental health duties include inspecting all restaurants, swimming pools, public buildings, drinking water systems, sewage systems, industrial camps and other potential health hazards.
A Ministry of Health representative responded by saying it's up to each health authority to hire the proper amount of inspectors needed to do the job.
A media relations representative said Northern Health receives a budget from government from within which they plan for health services across the health authority region to ensure that they are working successfully to promote health and prevent illness.
Meanwhile, some of the details within the posted rankings are confusing.
For example, Pho U & Me got a rating of high followed by five moderate ratings between
Dec. 22, 2015 and March 23, 2016. According to the online information, there has been no follow up since that time.
When looking at details of the inspection dated Feb. 3, 2016, there are no violations found but the rating is kept at moderate with no explanation.
About a year or so ago, there was a change made to the database and now only the citations show and the comments offered by the inspectors are not made public, Hayer said.
"We are in favour of having those on the public site because it tells the story," she said. "I mean if you go on and you don't see anything cited but you're like why is it moderate, there's actually a bunch of reasons why it's still listed as moderate and there's a bunch of things that operator still has to do to bring them back to a lower hazard, but the public wouldn't be able to see that."
Furthermore, some restaurants are listed with a rating of unknown, which is incorrect.
"Every public facility must have a hazard rating on it," Hayer said.
"So I think anything that has an unknown category is actually an error that needs to be corrected from our internal site to reflect onto the external."
The website also still states there's a list of FoodSafe Excellence Restaurants but that program was eliminated so there are no restaurants in B.C. with a rating of excellent.
The best a restaurant can ever do is rate as a low hazard but sometimes there is a gap between the inspection and when the result becomes publicly available.
"It's the environmental health officer themselves that enters their inspection reports into the database, so there is a little bit sometimes of a lag period where it's going on to the public site," Hayer explained. "I just have to caution that I probably can't speak to each individual restaurant or anything like that or the working in and outs of maybe the relationship because what usually happens in those types of scenarios again is that the environmental health officer will be working with that restaurant."
Hayer said the site is there for the public to go check out restaurants.
"(The public has) every right to know what is going on in these facilities but I would probably have to check in with each individual inspector and ask if they did put their follow up reports into the actual database," Hayer said. "Because if they're not that's probably where the discrepancies happen."
There are many details addressed during a restaurant inspection. Is there a rodent or insect infestation? Are utensils and equipment properly sanitized?
Is there a question of food being contaminated by other food or improper refrigeration? Is it safe physically for people to be in the restaurant?
Within these issues are rankings of low, moderate and high, which is an assessment of the risk at the time of inspection, based on the observations made by the environmental health officer.
A low rating is given when there is no critical hazards, lower probability of risk to the public, and the operator is showing a willingness to comply.
"We recognize the fact that there's no facility or situation ever that is completely hazard free although it may appear that way at the time the inspection happened," Hayer said.
A moderate rating is given if it is observed at the time of inspection one or more critical hazards or a combination of non-critical hazards that can contribute to a risk to the public, she added.
"They didn't take the garbage out and it's blocking the back door," Hayer said as an example.
"Or it could be building up and that could be a pest attractant."
A high hazard rating is a combination of critical hazards and non-critical hazards, which puts the public at significant risk.
"If the operator doesn't demonstrate an understanding of the hazard or there's a history of non-compliance, we've had complaints of a food-borne illness and an investigation, all those things will put that high hazard and the HO (health officer) must go back and do a follow up with the high and the moderate because the goal is to work with those ones to bring them back down to low.
There's also an option to issue tickets if an inspector goes into a facility and gives a moderate ranking but there's been many concerns in the past and it's to the point where the operator is just not listening, Hayer said.
"The other option is writing them a court order saying they must do this, this and this," she added. "If they do not comply with that order, it could result in legal action against the facility."
If the inspector sees progress being made on the issues they will continue to work with the operator, Hayer said.
"We have to make sure anything that's critical or high hazard has been addressed and if it's the maintenance issues in the restaurant we give them some time to work on them and then if we don't get anywhere after several attempts we'll usually go to the order writing stage or ticket writing or the closure of the facility."
Tickets vary from $275 to $575, depending on the hazard. There can be multiple tickets issued.
To check out the ratings of local restaurants, visit www.healthspace.ca/clients/nha/NHA_Website.nsf.
