As of July 1, 2015, the Department contracts with 19 local health departments to perform retail food licensing, inspections, and enforcement in 3 cities and 58 of Iowa's 99 counties. The Department directly performs the retail inspections, licensing, and enforcement in 50 of 99 counties including state's most populous county Polk County which includes Des Moines. The state directly inspects over 50% of food establishments or approximately 11,000 and the 19 local governments inspect 11,000. The Department currently employs 17 individuals that routinely complete retail food inspections. The local health agencies employ over 50 additional inspectors who complete retail food inspections. Overall, the completion of the projects described in this proposal and related documents will allow the Department to move toward full conformance and enhance conformance with the retail program standards. The development of the reports/exports related to compliance and enforcement and routine regular review of progress of each inspector will assist in ensuring continued conformance with Standard 6 and further ensure appropriate attention is being focused by inspectional and leadership staff to ensure the reduction of risk factor violations. The development and use of the chain or owner baseline survey (trending) will assist in educating and showing operators where systematic improvements can be made to assist in reduce risk factor violations. We anticipate this owner or chain approach could have a significant impact in reducing risk factor violations and improving practice in multiple establishments. Using the baseline survey to help guide the development and revision of documents will assist in reducing risk factor violations. Routinely reviewing and updating documents will ensure the most current and effective information is provided. Translating the documents into appropriate languages and enhancing the documents using most illustrations and graphics will also assist in communicating concepts related to risk factor violations to operators. Further, using social media and other techniques will enhance and provide a more effective means of communicating and often instantaneous. Lastly, the joint inspection program will improve inspectional quality and allow mentoring and shadowing desired behaviors to improve the overall quality of inspections. We believe this project improves the quality and uniformity of inspections and will also lead to a reduction of risk factor violations. Together, these programs seek to enhance and ensure the Department's conformance with Standards 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9.
Our focus is to conform and enhance conformance to the Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards by improving education and response related to risk factor violations. This will include developing and modeling inspectional techniques, information for industry, and educational materials for industry.
