New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene passed regulations Tuesday requiring restaurants to publicly post their cleanliness grade starting in July. Public health inspectors will rate restaurants with school-like grades — A for high performance, B for passing, C for failing — and restaurants will be given placards color-coded to the grades to be placed in restaurant windows or entrances.
From The New York Times:
“Giving consumers more information will help make our restaurants safer and cleaner,” said the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, who is chairman of the health board. “The grade in the window will give you a sense of how clean the kitchen is — and it will give every restaurant operator an incentive to maintain safe, sanitary conditions.”
After the vote, Robert Bookman, legislative counsel for the New York City chapters of the New York State Restaurant Association — the operators’ trade group — charged that “letter grading will be more misleading than helpful,” adding that “it will be unfair and a black eye to this industry in the restaurant capital of the word.”
Proponents say a similar system used in Los Angeles for over a decade has helped decrease the number of hospitalizations caused by food-borne illnesses.
a good policy