Summary of FDA's Report on Risk Factors in Food Service Establishments

FDA compiled analysis of inspection reports of different foodservice establishments over 2013/2014 as part of a 10 year study.    The whole report can be found here, but we have summarized the most important findings:

• Most establishments had 3 or more food safety issues.
• It helps to have a Certified Food Safety Manager onsite.  Many jurisdictions do not require it.
• It is beneficial to have an established food safety management system.  Most have no system to a rudimentary system.
• While people generally cook food correctly and handle raw meats properly, handwashing and keeping TCS foods out of the temperature danger zone are the biggest issues.

Purpose of Study
"The purpose of each restaurant data collection during the current 10-year study period is to investigate the relationship between FSMS or food safety management systems (e.g., procedures, training, and monitoring), certified food protection managers (CFPMs), and the occurrence of risk factors and food safety behaviors/practices commonly associated with foodborne illness in restaurants"

Objectives
"Identify the least and most often occurring foodborne illness risk factor and food safety behaviors/practices in restaurants within the United States
• Determine the extent to which FSMS and the presence of a CFPM impact the occurrence of food safety behaviors/practices
• Determine whether the occurrence of food safety behaviors/practices in restaurants differs based on an establishment’s risk categorization and status as a single-unit or multiple-unit operation (e.g., restaurants that are part of an operation with two or more units)

Having a Certified Food Safety Manager
Operations with No Certified Food Safety Manger - Fast food 20%  Full service 25%
[It is important to note that 30% of establishments were in jurisdictions that did not have this as a regulatory requirement, although it is "suggested" in the Food Code]

Having a Food Safety Management System
Percent establishment with no food safety management system  - Fast food  13%  Full service 31%
Percent establishments with an under developed food safety management system -  Fast food 48  Full service 60%.  [Clearly, a lot of room for improvement, but to what degree can this be required]

Most Common Risk Issues
The two most commonly occurring risk factors found out-of-compliance in both types of restaurants were improper holding/Time and Temperature (fast food, 78%; full-service restaurants, 95%) and poor personal hygiene (fast food, 67%; full-service restaurants, 83%).
Inadequate cooking was the least commonly occurring risk factor found out-of-compliance in both fast food (15%) and full-service restaurants (33%).

"This suggests that while restaurants are better at managing bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat foods and ensuring foods are cooked to required temperatures, there remains a need to gain better control over cold holding foods requiring refrigeration and employee handwashing."

Number of Risk Issues Per Establishment.
Ranged from none to over 10, but the median was 3 non-compliant issues for fast food establishments and about 5 for full service. [We would generally expect a higher number of non-compliance issues in a full service establishment because they are normally more complex operations]

Impact of having a Certified Food Protection Mangers....while many comparisons on how CFPMs status were not significant, there were still less issues when the establishment had a CFPM present.  So just having a CFPM does not make a big difference compared to having one on site.  The same holds true for full service restaurants.

"Fast food restaurants with a CFPM present and in charge had a significantly lower number of data items out-of-compliance than those with no CFPM (p = 0.0160). This indicates a significant difference in the number of out-of-compliance data items between establishments with a CFPM present and those that did not have a CFPM present at the time of data collection."

"Full-service restaurants with a CFPM present and in charge had a significantly lower number of data items out-of-compliance than those with no CFPM (p < 0.0001). This indicates a significant difference in the number of out-of-compliance data items between establishments with a CFPM present and those without a CFPM present at the time of data collection"

Impact of having a Food Safety Management System - Yes, it is better to have established management systems.

"FSMS were the strongest predictor of data items being out-of-compliance in both fast food and full-service restaurants: those with well-developed food safety management systems had significantly fewer food safety behaviors/practices out-of-compliance than did those with less developed food safety management systems."