Dirty Dining: A Special Undercover Investigation
You use your hands all the time, but do you wash them just as often? Every day people are touching dirty surfaces, bodily fluids and then other people. You wouldn't go under the knife with surgeons who hadn't washed their hands. So, what about a cook who skipped the soap? CBS 12's I-Team explores this hidden danger in restaurants for this week's Dirty Dining.
It's more common than you think. Some restaurant employees are touching your food without washing their hands. What you can't see, can't hurt you? Right? Wrong.
Our CBS 12 I-Team hidden camera shows where those hands have been. We went to the Boca Breakfast and Lunch Club on Mizner Boulevard and found a server playing with her hair, eating and then delivering silverware. The other server was touching bread and putting it into the toaster with no handwashing taking place at all. It happens over and over again here. Another server was touching her hair, her face, and then the bagels with her bare hands. And another was touching her eye, then moments later, she grabbed someone's toast. Our undercover camera caught another one with her fingers around her mouth, wiping gunk out of her eyes, and digging in her ears. Then, off camera, she delivered the bagel to our producer without ever washing her hands. We found all of this at the Boca Breakfast and Lunch Club - a restaurant in our area with one of the highest number of hand hygiene violations.
We showed the video to food safety expert Fred Stein. He told us, “They are supposed to be using tongs to do that. If you have a sick worker and they touch their face, now and they touch ready to eat food, there could be an outbreak, a big outbreak.”
In their September 9th state inspection, we found: violations for working with raw food then cooked food without washing hands, violations for employees handling dirty equipment and then preparing food with no handwashing, a repeat violation for the cook using a cell phone while cooking with no handwashing.
That was September and our I-Team hidden camera has been back five times since then. We found the employees are still breaking the rules.
Fred Stein explains the danger, “That bagel is served to the wrong person, and by the wrong person I mean, someone who is immuno-compromised, a small child, geriatric... that person can get sick, can get a very serious illness, even die from this.”
So, what does the restaurant owner have to say about all this? We told him what our undercover camera had found, but he didn’t want to see our tape and instead said he would be getting his lawyer involved. He also would not answer questions about his restaurant’s handwashing policies.
The restaurant owners may not like what we do, but you do.
Our viewers always ask – gloves or no gloves – what’s the rule?
Well, it depends. The employees can use gloves, but the gloves should be “single use only.”
If the employees are not using gloves, they have to follow a policy of constantly washing their hands. Remember, gloves can represent a false sense of security because who knows what the employees are doing with the gloves on.
Sarah Klein with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety watchdog group, says, “Often times, employees forget they are wearing them and do the exact same things with gloves on as with the gloves off.”
However, these Boca Breakfast and Lunch Club servers were not wearing gloves and were not washing their hands. We also saw them counting cash right before counting bagels -- another big no no.
Don't have a hidden camera? Don't worry. Much of this stuff is happening in plain view. Just take a look behind the counter, before you eat what's in front of you.
TARA CARDOSO, CBS 12 I-TEAM.
Now for the CBS 12 Clean Plates Awards~!
While the I-Team was researching this report we used our hidden camera to visit several restaurants. Besides the problem places, we found a few with “Clean Plates” doing just what they're supposed to do.
A Subway in West Palm Beach had different workers touching the food than the money.
At a Dunkin Donuts in Boca Raton they are safely using paper to touch the food.
And at a Nature's Way Café in West Palm Beach, they are using a new pair of gloves each time they prepare food.
Congrats to this week's Clean Plate winners!
