Validating food establishment risk classification by analyzing health inspections

Public health inspectors may schedule the frequency of their inspections by using a criterion that reflects the level of risk in a food facility’s food handling practices. Previous research has shown that higher risk facilities have more difficulty adhering to food safety practices, and thus are linked with more restaurant associated foodborne illness outbreaks. Given limits on state spending for public health, this methodology of spending more resources on perceived higher risk establishments makes fiscal sense. Foodservice establishments with a greater potential risk for harm are inspected more often. The next logical point would be to record whether the high-risk foodservice establishment had more opportunities for food safety infractions simply because of a greater total observed and applicable food safety practices. For example, there are significant differences in the number of potential food safety violations for a facility that only serves pre-packaged foods compared to a facility that prepares raw ingredients and cooks meals on site. The objective of the present study was to address gaps in the literature by accounting for variations in health inspections in Arkansas validating whether foodservice establishments labeled as higher risk are more likely to incur food safety violations. Our analysis of Arkansas food service inspection reports showed that high priority facilities had the highest critical and non-critical violation rates, followed by medium and low priority facilities. Average critical violations per inspection were 0.65, 1.01, and 2.07 for low, medium, high priority establishments, respectively. The results in this study show the risk classification scheme used by the Arkansas state health department coincides with health inspection violation rates and total applicable and observed food safety items.