District Environmental Health Director explains food service certification

By requiring food service establishments to be licensed, county health departments are protecting their communities from exposure to more than 250 types of food-borne illnesses.

“One of our major goals is to minimize illness caused by consuming contaminated food,” explained Southwest District Environmental Health Director Dewayne Tanner. “Many different disease-causing microbes, or pathogens, can contaminate foods, so there are many different food-borne infections.”

In addition, poisonous chemicals or other harmful substances can cause food-borne illnesses if they are present in food, he said.

“We have an inspection process for restaurants, carry-out places, mobile food service operations and temporary food service operations to ensure food is handled, stored and prepared using good food management practices,” Tanner said. “Food for public consumption has to be prepared in a permitted site. This law has been on the books for a long time, and it is for the public’s protection.”

He said food to be sold may not be prepared in private homes and that food service establishment operations are not to be conducted in private homes. “The issue is public health. Without inspections and permitting, whether food was safe to eat would become a guessing game that could easily be hazardous to your health.”

Even with local, state and federal regulations in place for commercial food handling, preparation and inspection, an estimated 76 million cases of foodborne disease occur each year in the United States, added Southwest District Health Director Dr. Jacqueline Grant.
“The great majority of these cases are mild and cause symptoms for only a day or two,” Grant said. “Some cases are more serious. The CDC (National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) estimates that there are 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths related to food-borne illnesses annually.”
The most severe cases tend to occur in the very old, the very young, people with compromised immune systems and healthy people exposed to a very high amount of an organism, she said.

For more information about environmental health regulations, food service permitting and other services go on-line to www.southwestgeorgiapublichealth.org, and click on Environmental Health.