Mayor Mike Responds to the Hartford Courant Article from February 17, 2023
On Friday, February 17th, the Hartford Courant published a story, reporting food preparation health violations at 19 local restaurants. All violations were addressed by the businesses promptly, yet this story continues to rock the community as it’s taken on its own life via social media.
Let’s unpack the background that led up to the story.
As everyone should be aware, the Town of East Hartford has a Health Department that is led by a capable Health Director named Laurence Burnsed. The Town also employs three sanitarians who have the state mandated responsibility to regularly inspect every business and organization that conducts food services for the public.
There are currently 229 licensed establishments in East Hartford, including 83 restaurants; 63 convenience stores or other businesses that provide any level of food preparation; 41 institutional settings (schools, daycares, food production facilities); and 29 churches, social clubs and concession stands. Our sanitarians are Mike, Anton, and Louise and they are skilled and professional, carrying out technical aspects of the job to ensure that when you and I sit down to eat a meal at a restaurant, or purchase food prepared by a business in East Hartford, that meal is safe to consume.
Food service establishment inspections are conducted one to four times per year depending on the complexity of food operations and risk of illness due to contamination or food handling practices. All food establishments are held to the State’s Public Health Code and our sanitarians are also required to conduct complaint inspections in a timely manner if consumers report any concerns, such as observed cleanliness issues, food service practices, or quality of food served. Inspections are conducted to hold establishments to requirements that assure health and safety standards to protect the publics’ health.
However, these inspections also serve as an opportunity for sanitarians to coach and educate owners and staff how to achieve the high bar of food regulations. When violations are observed, sanitarians take the time during the inspection to advise staff of the necessary corrective actions to remain in operations. If there are food storage, cooking, or facility standards that require immediate correction, sanitarians assure those actions occur following the inspection, and conduct a follow-up inspection to assure all corrective items are addressed.
If operations are observed that pose an imminent risk of health and safety to the public, local health officials have the authority to immediately suspend the establishments’ license and shut down operations until standards are met. Simply, if a restaurant wasn’t safe, it wouldn’t be open and you can trust that the three sanitarians are working in your best interest.
Now, back to the ramp up to the printed newspaper story. Earlier in February, a Hartford Courant reporter named Pam Mcloughlin asked for copies of the inspection reports from our Health Department. We are required under the Freedom of Information Act, which provides transparency in government, to timely provide those reports to the media. How they use those reports, why they chose only the 19 that failed for the article, is beyond our control.
In any case, The Hartford Courant chose to create a list, identifying restaurants that failed an initial inspection and then subsequently passed a follow-up inspection to confirm the establishment addressed corrective actions to remain in operation. Certainly an article like this generates a visceral response which I have to believe is intended to sell newspapers.
What further exacerbated the situation is a local Facebook group shared the story and the many comments were a mix of sympathy for restaurants who passed re-inspection and were still listed in the article and then anger from consumers who demanded more from these restaurants.
The reason I’m choosing to comment on this issue today is, no matter how much we want a community and its local restaurants to succeed, the fallout from the article to the listed restaurants who have yet to recover from Covid-19 is unfortunate.
Let’s all remember that local restaurants are not large chains, but instead are mom-and-pop operations with local roots, where residents know the owners by name, so the article hits their pocketbooks in ways that was unnecessary and unfortunate. Our small businesses are the heart and soul of the East Hartford economy.
The Hartford Courant, by weaponizing a local Health Department’s task to generate headlines at the expense of the local restaurant community, has done a disservice to East Hartford in my opinion.