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Orange County Considering Rating System for Restaurants
February 28, 2008

If a new proposed food rating system for restaurants under review by the Orange County Board of Supervisors comes into effect, you might never again have to worry if the diner you're stepping into uses clean dishes or plates, or if the delicacies at the Chinese eatery down the road includes roaches as one of its ingredients. Knowledge could be as simple as A-B-C!

That's the current food rating system practiced in San Diego and Los Angeles. In Orange County, on the other hand, you have had to be satisfied with visiting the website of the Orange County Health Care Agency to learn of any reported violations in restaurants in the county. You wouldn't normally visit the website to check up on violations unless you actually fell ill from eating at the place which is a little too late in our opinion. Diners need to have a rating system in place that can allow them to make seriously informed choices about the eatery.

No one can argue with the benefits of such a system. Some restaurant owners predictably are not too pleased at the prospects of such punitive screening of restaurants. If the new rating system comes into place, the rating will have to be displayed outside and the prospect has some owners skittish. They say that rules like this will punish the restaurants for conditions that are outside their control. We don't understand the reason for all this hand wringing. If basic hygiene and cleanliness standards are maintained, there is nothing preventing a restaurant from getting a shiny A rating which will obviously be very assuring to any diner who enters the restaurant. The only restaurants that might suffer from the rating system are those who have made a habit of violations and who risk getting a C on the rating card.

In any case, what restaurant owners think shouldn't be paramount to what's good for the public. We have seen too many videos of "When Chefs Attack" to take that shiny cutlery and the crisp tablecloth very seriously. The only way to guarantee that your soup has no rodent droppings might be to check for the rating of the restaurant on the way in. Food poisoning is just one of the illnesses a person who eats tainted food can suffer from, and if a person has the choice to avoid an eatery that doesn't practice the very highest standards of hygiene, they deserve to lose business.

Cleaner restaurants can be nothing but good for public health, and even if there are a few hiccups in the beginning stages, the plan bodes well for the county. While you could eat at a restaurant with less than perfect hygiene standards and still not fall ill, the risk of illnesses outweigh any good luck that you might have.

One of the rights of the public in a democracy is the right to information. This rating system will give OC residents exactly that - the information about the conditions under which their meal was prepared.

If you have suffered food poisoning from an ill-maintained restaurant, you need the help of a qualified California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

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