Sacramento-area restaurants are still cooking. So why have health inspections stopped?

More than 750 Sacramento-area restaurants remain open for takeout or delivery, but no one’s checking up on them in person.

Sacramento County Environmental Management Department inspectors have reviewed just one food facility – a Walgreens that had been partially closed after failing two previous inspections – since March 19, according to The Sacramento Bee’s analysis.

EMD inspectors have instead been calling 200 to 300 eateries daily to fill them in on the county’s COVID-19 Public Health Order, which tells people to shelter-in-place other than to perform essential functions, and its first appendix, a checklist covering social distancing protocol, according to Environmental Health Division chief Kelly McCoy. They’ve also been asking operators about ongoing food safety practices such as refrigeration and cleanliness, though full inspection reports aren’t being written up, per the county’s website.

“This is not replacing an inspection. It’s really to provide the information they need to protect customers and employees right now,” McCoy said.

But actually going to the restaurant and checking on their practices? For now, that’s only being done if there’s a complaint or reason to believe there’s something unsafe going on, McCoy said.

Restaurants, schools, hospitals and other commercial food kitchens are normally inspected three times per year, while bars and markets get looked over twice annually. The county’s 6,500 or so food-serving establishments should know the drill well enough to regulate themselves for a short period of time, McCoy said.

No vermin. Keep perishables below 41 degrees or above 134 degrees unless they’ve been out for less than four hours. Get faulty pipes fixed, keep cooking areas clean and follow everything else in the 160-page California Retail Food Code.

“The public should be confident in the restaurants they’ve been eating in and shouldn’t be shying away from patronizing them,” McCoy said. “They know what they need to do and if we don’t see them for three weeks, I mean, it’s normally four to six months before they see us (after each inspection). They’ve had education and training and things like that, and they know what they need to do.”

An average of 16 Sacramento County eateries failed 20 cumulative inspections per month in 2019, according to a CBS Sacramento analysis. Seven restaurants, schools or grocery stores had failed a total of nine inspections in March when the county ceased inspections.

Yolo and El Dorado counties’ respective environmental health offices adopted similar approaches last month. Yolo County Environmental Health Department staff, most of whom are working from home, have contacted all food facilities in the county to let them know about restrictions, talk about food and employee safety and answer questions, department director April Meneghetti wrote in an email.

“At this time, inspectors are only going into facilities if they receive a complaint about their operation,” Meneghetti wrote. “As the situation evolves we are continuously re-evaluating to determine when it will be the right time for us to resume inspections in person.”

El Dorado County’s environmental health specialists are charged with inspecting wells, small water systems and sewage tanks in addition to restaurants, environmental management manager Jeff Warren wrote in an email.

“My field staff still have a presence in their respective districts (through) monitoring for compliance,” Warren wrote. “We shall see how the next few weeks play out and when restrictions may be lifted. At that point we will reevaluate our inspections process and proceed from there.”

The inspection moratorium mirrors that of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which announced last month it would temporarily stop routine safety inspections of agricultural producers both stateside and abroad. Inspections will still be conducted when and where suspected outbreaks occur.

There’s no evidence that the coronavirus can be transmitted through food, as the Centers for Disease Control has repeatedly stated. What can be transmitted through ill-prepared food is a list of maladies including norovirus, salmonella and listeria.

An estimated 48 million Americans contract some sort of foodborne illness per year, according to the CDC. Of those, 120,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die as a result of the disease.

A 2017 outbreak of botulism, a slow-paralyzing disease that can lead to respiratory failure if not treated, caused an Antioch man’s death and 10 other people to be hospitalized. The outbreak was traced back to a Walnut Grove gas station’s nacho cheese sauce.

For now, though, Sacramento-area counties are hoping reminders are enough to keep the sloppy sharp. They’re not just worried about public health from food-borne illnesses; potential exposure to the coronavirus is a cause for concern as well.

“We really want to make sure it’s safe to send our staff out because we definitely don’t want our staff inadvertently taking something to a restaurant or vice versa,” McCoy said. “We’re being really careful about sending people out right now.”

This story was originally published April 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.