Another example of funding and staffing challenges for public health, making it a challenge to meet the standards they set for themselves. Oregon’s new plan for food safety acknowledges that "there will always be a backlog":
Inspection procedures and penalties are inconsistent, auditors said. And the state has no system to ensure food operators are licensed […] “The findings weren’t really a surprise to us,” Stephanie Page, food safety director for the Oregon Department of Agriculture told the state Board of Agriculture at its meeting […] [The new plan] calls for the program to accept that there will always be a backlog of inspections, but establish an acceptable goal. In December 2014, the Statesman Journal reported on the Food Safety Program’s failure to regularly inspect grocery stores. The newspaper’s investigation showed that 55 percent of retail food establishments had not had an inspection in the past year, and 5 percent had not had an inspection for three years or more.
Read the rest of the article here.
