Phobic About Food: The Restaurant Double Whammy

Contaminated Food Imports, Unscreened
Illegal Immigrants Imperil Restaurant Diners

By Alice Shane


For a moment, forget the brouhaha over transfats and think bacteria, botulism, E.coli, microbes, pathogens – bad things that can happen to restaurant food and, ultimately, to you.

This is an issue I’ve been concerned about since coming home one evening after dinner at an expensive restaurant and having to reach for the Imodium. It occurred to me that, perhaps, I should eat out less often. I’ve been sporting aprons and consulting cook books with greater frequency ever since.

Think food imports -- contaminated pet food may be the first wave of a potential food time bomb. The FDA isn’t prepared to protect you, let alone your cat or dog. Nine-million shipments of imported food arrived in the USA last year, landing on your table and in restaurants. But the FDA inspected less than 1% of those imports. Anytime you sit down to dinner, you’re dining on at least three different types of imported food – say, poultry from Mexico, lettuce from Guatemala, seafood, asparagus and broccoli from China.

Let’s assume that, when preparing food at home, you thoroughly wash veggies, fruit, seafood –precautions you can’t count on at restaurants. The gruesome reality is, a lot of imported produce is tainted with human fertilizer and toxic chemicals that are illegal in this country.

Frozen fish imported from China has been found to be contaminated with veterinary antibiotics or turned back for being just plain filthy. Poisonous puffer fish, mislabeled as monkfish by Chinese exporters, has already reached our shores, sickened people and, supposedly, withdrawn from distribution.

Now, think illegal immigrants. According to labor statistics, 24% are engaged in food preparation – and ignorant about sanitation. I’m not talking about crop workers, although that’s a major concern. I’m referring to illegals who work in restaurants as fryers, cooks, dishwashers. And I’m not talking Taco Bell. Illegals work behind the scenes in upscale restaurants, too – a well-known national chain of pricey steakhouses comes to mind.

Think tuberculosis, polio, leprosy, typhoid – diseases that largely disappeared years ago but are now being reintroduced by illegals, according to the Centers for Disease Control. There’s also hepatitis, influenza, malaria, mumps, SARS, cholera, dengue fever, Chagas’ disease to worry about if you’re a disease phoebe like me.

Unlike legal immigrants who must submit to medical examinations before entering our population, illegals working in restaurants (or picking crops) have not been immunized against communicable diseases, nor are they medically screened before they sneak into the US. Restaurant owners are not required to certify that food workers are disease free. Ask yourself, is a food handler at your favorite restaurant spreading a particularly virulent form of TB known as Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis endemic to Mexico? Who will ever know?

Illegals employed in restaurants may or may not be trained in the nuances of hand washing and the wearing of rubber gloves, though restaurant owners are mandated to instruct kitchen workers and waiters in these precautions. A New Jersey restaurant inspector tells me there’s so much turnover among restaurant employees that many owners and managers avoid going through the sanitation drill.

So where does all this gloom and doom leave you, the food consumer and restaurant junkie? Stay tuned.

© 2007; Alice Shane/Alice Shane Communications. All rights reserved.