A Chinese food restaurant on St. Peter’s Road in Charlottetown was ordered in July to clean up its act.
Environmental health inspectors issued a health order to Wayne’s Chinese Takeout on July 4 at 73 St. Peter’s Road for eight violations of the provincial regulations.
It was cited for failure to have screen doors and windows to keep out flies, insects, rodents and vermin, inadequate sanitation practices, failure to protect food from potential contamination, improper storage of potentially hazardous foods, not keeping food at the appropriate temperature and failure to ensure employees were washing their hands before handling food.
Environmental health inspectors have a graduated system when it comes to flagging violations — warning letters, notice of intent to issue a health order and a health order, the latter of which requires the business owner to take immediate action.
“The screen door was missing so the back door had been left open with no screen there and several windows had damaged screens so the issue would be for the potential entry of pests,’’ said Ryan Neale, senior environmental health officer. “There are also many soiled surfaces throughout the establishment — floors, shelving, walls, things like that that had obvious dirt that had not been cleaned.’’
In terms of storing utensils, Neale said “it was haphazard and unsanitary storage conditions in the kitchen.” He added that many items, refrigerated or dried foods, were not covered.
The day the inspectors were there, rice had been left out. Neale said it was thrown out after inspectors flagged the problem.
“If it’s unrefrigerated for more than a couple of hours then there’s potential for bacteria to grow and potentially produce toxins that could make a person sick.’’
In terms of food handling hygiene, Neale said inspectors observed staff handling and preparing food and “in this case they felt the hand washing was lacking.’’ Inspectors also observed food preparation staff weren’t wearing hats or hair nets.
Neale said they did not receive any reports of anyone getting ill and within two hours of the inspectors flagging the eight violations, the four most critical violations were remedied. The back door, for example, was closed to compensate for the lack of a screen door.
“Those are the ones that could potentially make a person sick. Those critical violations were addressed immediately.’’
A followup inspection was done July 10 and the remaining issues had been corrected.
“We actually had an unannounced official-type visit to provide the ability for the operator to ask questions and to further educate the operator on any issues,’’ Neale said, adding that environmental officers will be back to inspect Wayne’s Chinese Takeout at least once every four months.
Wayne Chen, the restaurant owner, declined to comment on this story.
dstewart@theguardian.pe.ca
Twitter.com/DveStewart
