King County still lacks restaurant rating system years after promising one

The E. coli outbreak that shuttered Ballard’s Matador Restaurant this past week looks to be tied to a source from outside the restaurant. And state health officials say it appears linked to more illnesses in Washington and three other states.

The outbreak hit close to home for Sarah Schacht, who deals with the after effects of an E. coli infection she got three years ago at a Seattle restaurant.

“I was in and out of the hospital, I had internal bleeding and was left with a lot of injuries as a result of that,” Schacht said.

That led her to become a vocal advocate for publicly displayed restaurant inspection grades, so diners can know how an eatery fared on health department inspections.

Her Change.org petition demanding it got several thousand signatures, and Public Health – Seattle and King County promised to implement one. Three years later, it still hasn’t.

“We haven’t seen anything meaningful other than study,” Schacht said.

The health department insists its still working diligently, and the delay is to ensure it comes up with the best system possible.

The person who heads the restaurant placard project and food safety program is on vacation for the next ten days, and no one else from the department would do an interview, according to a spokesperson for the agency.

But the spokesperson told me via email that after a number of studies, they are developing a system that would provide a more accurate picture of a restaurant.

It would be far more comprehensive than what is used in other cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, where restaurants get a simplistic letter grade like an A, B or C.

In a blog post earlier this year, the health department said those letter grades don’t actually distinguish what’s risky and what’s not.

A restaurant with a dirty floor but perfect food handling could get the same lower score as another with clean facilities but lax hand washing that could lead to the spread of foodborne illness.

Instead, the health department plans to distribute placards that reflect performance over time, not just a snapshot of the latest inspection.

While Schacht agrees with King County’s approach, she argues it has taken far too long.

“Maybe in the meantime, put your data out and make sure it’s on Yelp and other restaurant inspection apps that are widely used so consumers have a stopgap — they have something that they can refer to that’s easy so that on the fly they can make informed decisions,” Schacht said.

The King County Health Department does post all inspection results online, but even the department admits the database is cumbersome and in need of simplification and refinement.

Schacht says that data could be connected to Yelp and others for free in a matter of weeks, which is done in a number of other cities.

And she hopes the public takes notice and demands quicker action, for everyone’s well-being.

“We really do have to rally around this because it really does matter to all of us in going out to eat and our personal safety,” Schacht said.

In the meantime, the county says it is hoping to launch a pilot program by January.

Given that the health department has been promising the placards for several years, it’s hard to have faith in that timeline.

So what do we do in the meantime? You can go to the health department website and look for a restaurant’s inspection information in the database.

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