F0812

E

Widespread Food Storage, Labeling, and Temperature Monitoring Failures in Dietary Services

Petersburg, West Virginia Survey Completed on 02-11-2026

Penalty

No penalty information released

Summary

The deficiency involves the facility’s failure to procure, store, label, date, and monitor food in accordance with its own policies and professional standards. During an initial kitchen walkthrough, surveyors found extensive gaps in required temperature documentation for food items and equipment, including missing meal temperature logs for multiple consecutive days for cooked foods, desserts, drinks, the three-bowl sink, and several refrigeration and freezer units (four-door reach-in refrigerator, walk-in refrigerator, ice cream freezer, and meat freezer). The dietary supervisor repeatedly confirmed the missing entries and stated, "I just can't get them to do these," indicating that required daily temperature checks and recordings were not consistently performed as required by policy.

Surveyors also observed multiple violations of food storage and labeling policies. In the walk-in refrigerator, several items lacked open dates, use-by dates, or any labeling, including a small Totino’s pizza, bologna, a container of bacon grease, two employee meals, ham salad, a container of red sauce, a jar of jelly, and a container of cream cheese. In walk-in freezer #1, a box of product was stored open to the air on the floor, there were chunks of ice on the floor under the fans, and a cup of parmesan cheese was found with outdated dates. The dining supervisor acknowledged that pull dates and receive dates were not being added to products and that staff relied on vendor tags instead of facility dating practices, contrary to written policies requiring foods to be covered, labeled, dated, and monitored for use-by dates.

Additional sanitation and food-handling issues were identified during observations. A dietary employee was seen preparing food without a beard guard, despite a policy requiring hair nets, caps, and beard restraints when cooking or preparing food. On a revisit to the kitchen, surveyors found wet nesting of clean dishware, with drinking glasses, soup bowls, and coffee mugs stacked on trays without mats to allow for air flow and proper drying. The reach-in refrigerator contained a tray of lemon pie desserts without a prep or use-by date, and the walk-in freezer still had ice buildup on the floor and a case of product stored directly on the floor, with no received dates on any cases. These findings collectively demonstrate that the facility did not follow its own policies for temperature monitoring, labeling, dating, and sanitary storage of food and equipment for a census of 90 residents.