Time for the Supervisors to vote for letter grade restaurant health ratings?

Supervisor Janet Nguyen cast the key vote against the letter grading system for restaurants.   I broke the news afterwards that O.C. Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s husband, Tom Bonikowski, owned a Lee’s Sandwiches franchise in Stanton that had been fined many times by the O.C. HCA.  She never reported that when she voted against the letter grade ratings – and it blew up in the press.  Bonikowski has since sold the restaurant.

If you want to know if a restaurant has had food safety issues you have to look online – there is no notice posted at the restaurant.  If they are shut down at best they will post a notice saying that they have been shut down, and then a new notice saying that they have been cleared to reopen – but no details are offered at the restaurant.  And a week later, if you visit the restaurant, you will never know they had an issue – unless you knew to look them up online, according to the OC Safety News.

“Sometime in April of 2012, nine customers at an Orange County restaurant got sick after eating lettuce laced with Escherichia coli, the deadly, dreaded bacterium better known as E. coli. The lettuce came from Amazing Coachella Inc. of Coachella, and their poisoned product also struck eaters in Canada, where the outbreak was a national story. The OC restaurant was the only other culprit; it closed for a couple of days, then opened, and that was that,” according to the OC Weekly.

Here’s the kicker – the Orange County Health Care Agency, which inspects restaurants and oversees food safety in Orange County, never “never revealed it to the public when the outbreak occurred, and it doesn’t want you to know about it—now or ever.”

I wonder if Supervisor Nguyen shut down the E. Coli report?  Now that she has two little boys she needs to reconsider her vote against letter grade health ratings for O.C. Restaurants.  Food poisoning is no fun for adults – but it can kill children.

How might our O.C. Supervisors vote today if they were to reconsider letter grade health ratings for our restaurants?

• Nguyen is a candidate for the 34th State Senate District.  Surely she now wants to protect our children, even though in 2008 she voted not to?
• New Supervisor Todd Spitzer has built his career on public safety.  Surely he would vote to approve letter grade health ratings for our area restaurants?
• Supervisor John Moorlach is talking about running for Governor of California.  Surely he won’t vote against public health again?
• Supervisor Pat Bates is a candidate for the newly-formed 36th district.  Surely she won’t vote against public health, will she?
• And Supervisor Shawn Nelson is a personal injury lawyer.  Surely he knows how devastating food poisoning can be to consumers?

Now is the time for the Orange County Supervisors to try again – and this time I hope they will do the right thing and vote to inform the public when our local restaurants have bad health records.

Does this matter?  You bet.  Click here and prepare to be shocked by the poor health record of many of the eating establishments at Disneyland!

Click here to find out how to contact your Supervisors – and ask them to please vote for letter grade health ratings for O.C. restaurants!