Failure to Properly Store, Label, and Prepare Food and Maintain Kitchen Cleanliness
Penalty
Summary
The facility failed to store, prepare, distribute, and serve food in accordance with professional standards for food service safety. During observations in the kitchen, surveyors found that expired food items were not disposed of in the refrigerator and freezer. Multiple food items, including cut-up tomatoes, pineapples, white gravy, orange juice, teas, water, salad, French fries, and diced chicken, were either missing preparation or expiration dates, or were found to be expired. The facility's policies required all food items to be labeled with preparation and expiration dates, but this was not consistently followed. Additionally, the deep fryer in the kitchen was not cleaned weekly as required by facility policy. The fryer was observed to have black cooking oil with brownish-black food crumbs floating on top, and the fryer cover had food crumbs and grease buildup. The cleaning schedule did not indicate that the fryer had been cleaned for the week in question, and staff had not initialed the cleaning log to confirm completion of cleaning tasks. The Dietary Manager acknowledged that the fryer was used daily and should be cleaned weekly, but could not confirm that this was being done consistently. Interviews with the Dietary Manager and Administrator revealed that while in-services on labeling and dating food had been conducted recently, in-services on cleaning the deep fryer had not been completed recently. The Administrator was not aware of the expired food items or the lack of fryer cleaning, and stated that she expected the Dietary Manager to report such issues. A confidential complainant described the kitchen as filthy and stated that the fryer grease was changed only once a month, despite daily use.