When The Oregonian/OregonLive set out to create the state’s first online database of grocery store food safety inspections, the newsroom looked for a metric that would allow Oregonians to easily compare stores.

It’s a routine feature in some states, where letter grades or numeric scores for grocery stores allow consumers to see how their local market did on its most recent inspection.

In Oregon, the state Department of Agriculture doesn’t grade grocery stores. Agency officials don’t like the idea. The purpose of inspections, they say, is to protect public health by telling businesses what they’ve done wrong so they can fix problems.

“A points system is not required and is not part of our enforcement focus,” said Isaak Stapleton, the state’s food safety director. “A more effective approach to prevention of food borne illness is through education of the importance of the regulations and ensuring corrective actions rather than prioritizing a business trying to meet a scoring threshold.”

Department officials weren’t aware their own rules included point values for each violation type until a reporter told them.

They didn’t know their own internal inspections database contained another version of point deductions for serious and moderately serious infractions.

And when they learned it did, they said they would delete the points from their system. Ag department spokeswoman Andrea Cantu-Schomus said she asked the agency’s technical staff to remove them.

“They’re looking into what it would take to maybe zero that out,” Cantu-Schomus said. “As with most state agencies’ IT projects, there’s a long list and where that’s prioritized hasn’t been established yet.”

SEARCH THE DATABASE

The Oregonian/OregonLive’s scoring system doesn’t rely on the numbers Cantu-Schomus said would be deleted. The newsroom’s scores are a tally of points that Oregon’s Retail Food Code assigns to each violation type, another piece of information kept in the database.

Stapleton, the food safety director, said the department’s recommendation that the newsroom avoid publishing numeric scores was simply that. Officials worked closely with reporters to ensure other aspects of the data would be accurate, and the department has promised to provide monthly updates to the database.

“The food safety program is committed to being open and transparent,” Stapleton said.

But consumer advocates said they were concerned by the state’s desire to purge scores from its database.

“To actively conceal it from the public, it’s them abandoning their duty to protect us,” said Sarah Sorscher, deputy regulatory affairs director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “It’s very troubling.”

Grocery stores don’t want to remind customers that foodborne illness is an issue, Sorscher said.

Oregon is the only West Coast state that does not post results of its grocery store inspections online. Stapleton said consumers can obtain reports by filing a public records request.

The state once assigned scores to stores, just like restaurants get. But the Department of Agriculture stopped doing it in the early 2000s after it updated its food safety laws.

The state’s powerful grocery industry, which gives more to the average lawmaker in Oregon than anywhere in the nation, didn’t want scores. The agriculture department listened, according to Susan Kendrick, a food safety specialist with the agency.

“When we adopt a code, we always sit at the table with our constituents,” Kendrick said. “So we’re at the table with our industry, going through section by section of the code, and deciding if any adjustments need to be made. Our industry was supportive of not using scoring. It doesn’t always represent the inspection very well.”

But a remnant of the old scoring system remained in the agency’s food safety inspections database. That is the item officials sought to remove after learning about it from The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Joe Gilliam, a spokesman for the Northwest Grocery Association, said Oregon consumers are in good hands when shopping at their local supermarket.

“With over 60,000 food items in the average grocery store, both fresh and processed, the execution, regulation, enforcement, compliance, and innovation of food safety is job one for the grocery retailer and the Oregon Department of Agriculture,” Gilliam said in an email.

The association “has never given a political contribution to the Oregon Department of Agriculture,” Gilliam said.

A government agency would not be eligible to receive campaign contributions.

However, the lobbying group donated $561,000 to winning Oregon legislators in elections between 2008 and 2018, according to data collected by the National Institute on Money in Politics. Lawmakers set the agriculture department’s budget.

Marsha Cohen, a law professor at University of California’s Hastings College of the Law who is an expert in food safety law, said the department’s effort to eliminate point scores showed a captured regulatory agency, one that prioritizes the industry it’s supposed to oversee over the public interest.

“Who would not want this public?” she asked. “If you’re the A student, you want to put your grades on your resume. If you’re a C student, you don’t want anyone to put their grades on their resume. It’s no different in industry.”

Other states are actively working to increase transparency of food safety inspections in stores.

At least one study has shown that publicizing inspection results provides an incentive for business owners to improve their food handling. A 2018 study by two University of Minnesota public health researchers found that between 2011 and 2015, salmonella infection rates dropped 5% a year in New York City after it required letter grades to be posted in restaurants.

New York state started using a letter grading system for grocery stores and posting inspections online “for greater transparency into our food sanitary inspection process and to allow consumers to make more informed choices about where they purchase food,” said Kirstan Conley, a spokeswoman for New York’s agriculture department.

Alabama and Tennessee assign numeric scores. Pennsylvania gives pass/fail grades. The results are available online.

In Washington state, King County started requiring placards to be displayed in grocery stores in 2017, showing how their delis, bakeries or coffee shops performed in inspections. The county intends to eventually require a placard showing each grocery store performs overall. It doesn’t yet have a timeline for the deployment.

— Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis

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