Medu Olanrewaju, Turner Hollie, Cushon Jennifer A, Melis Deborah, Rea Leslie, Abdellatif Treena, Neudorf Cory O, Schwandt Michael
Saskatoon Health Region, Population and Public Health, Saskatoon, SK; Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK; School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Preventive Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON.
Can J Public Health. 2017 Mar 1;107(6):e533-e537. doi: 10.17269/cjph.107.5399.
Foodborne illness is an important contributor to morbidity and health system costs in Canada. Using number of critical hazards as a proxy for food safety, we sought to better understand how to improve food safety in restaurants. We compared the current standard of annual inspections to twice-yearly inspections among restaurants "at risk" for food safety infractions. These were restaurants that had three or more elevated-risk inspection ratings in the preceding 36 months.
We conducted a two-arm randomized controlled trial between November 2012 and October 2014. The intervention was twice-yearly routine restaurant inspection compared to standard once-yearly routine inspection. Included were all restaurants within Saskatoon Health Region that were assessed as "at risk", with 73 restaurants in the intervention arm and 78 in the control arm. Independent sample t-tests were conducted between groups to compare: i) average number of critical hazards per inspection; and ii) proportion of inspections resulting in a rating indicating an elevated hazard.
Over time we noted statistically significant improvements across both study arms, in number of both critical food safety hazards (decreased by 61%) and elevated-risk inspection ratings (decreased by 45%) (p < 0.0001). We observed no significant differences between the two groups pre- or post-intervention.
Results suggest increasing the number of annual routine inspections in high-risk restaurants was not associated with a significant difference in measures of compliance with food safety regulations. Findings of this study do not provide evidence supporting increased frequency of restaurant inspection from annually to twice annually.
食源性疾病是加拿大发病率和卫生系统成本的重要影响因素。我们以关键危害数量作为食品安全的代理指标，试图更好地了解如何改善餐厅的食品安全状况。我们将当前的年度检查标准与食品安全违规“风险较高”餐厅的半年检查标准进行了比较。这些餐厅在前36个月内有三次或更多次高风险检查评级。
我们在2012年11月至2014年10月期间进行了一项双臂随机对照试验。干预措施是将餐厅常规半年检查与标准的年度常规检查进行对比。纳入的是萨斯卡通卫生区域内所有被评估为“风险较高”的餐厅，干预组有73家餐厅，对照组有78家餐厅。在两组之间进行独立样本t检验，以比较：i）每次检查的关键危害平均数量；ii）导致评级显示危害增加的检查比例。
随着时间的推移，我们注意到两个研究组在关键食品安全危害数量（减少61%）和高风险检查评级（减少45%）方面均有统计学上的显著改善（p < 0.0001）。我们在干预前后两组之间未观察到显著差异。
结果表明，增加高风险餐厅的年度常规检查次数与食品安全法规合规措施的显著差异无关。本研究结果未提供证据支持将餐厅检查频率从每年一次提高到每年两次。
