Why does our food safety rating reflect grades in kindergarten?

We live in one of the biggest tech hubs in the world but our food safety ratings look like the equivalent of a kindergarten grading system.

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Early this year, King County rolled out a new food rating system that uses emoji-like faces to grade restaurants. Restaurants are now required to post their rating in clear view of any potential patron.

A restaurant’s rating is based on three main components: the trend of food safety practices over time, the scale of performance, and rating on a curve, according to the health department.

Putting aside the goofy emojis, there are real problems with the system, KIRO 7’s Gary Horcher discovered. He reports that several restaurants with the worst rating of “Needs to Improve” had the incorrect sign on their windows. KIRO 7 checked all 41 restaurants Public Health flagged online as “Needs to Improve,” and seven of them had the wrong placard. Two displayed no placard at all.

But will we be able to trust the ratings in the future? Horcher told KIRO Radio’s Ron and Don Show that we can after the department of health scrambled to inspect all 41 restaurants with a “Needs to Improve” rating during KIRO 7’s investigation.

“I do want to thank (KIRO 7) for bringing this to our attention because the public is our ears and eyes out there,” Ngozi Oleru, division director of the Environmental Health Division said, adding that the rating system is still relatively new, and it still has some flaws which are being worked out as they find them.

One flaw, some say, is that there isn’t enough information on the rating signs for people to make informed decisions. Horcher says he has talked with a number of people who have had near-death experiences who believe the signs need work.

KIRO Radio’s Ron Upshaw and Mike Lewis agreed. Lewis argues that the county should at least put the URL to the county’s food safety page. Or, perhaps, a QR code that could be scanned with a phone.

In King County, and especially Seattle, Ron says this shouldn’t be a problem.

“It’s such a 1990s approach.”