Restaurant health inspections on temporary pause in Albuquerque

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) –A new food ordinance in the City of Albuquerque is meant to make dining out safer but in the short-term, it means the city is not conducting it’s routine restaurant inspections.

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The city said customers should not be worried about eating out. They say the pause in inspections, is to make sure inspectors are equipped to enforce the city’s new rules. “We are not by any means just letting things go unwatched in the meantime,” said Deputy Director of Environmental Health Mark DiMenna.

It comes after the city officially adopted a new food safety ordinance at the start of August. Since then, restaurants and other permit holders are all being brought up to speed on the new rules while the city’s environmental health inspectors are learning to enforce them. “Anytime that we adopt a new food code, we get the latest and greatest food science, and all of the new additions that the FDA has found research should be included,” said DiMenna.

DiMenna said for the last week or so inspectors have been in training on everything from allergy labeling requirements to outdoor patio rules and a new category. “In addition to the standard green and red category of stickers we’ve always had, we’re adding a new yellow category,” said DiMenna.

That yellow category is meant as a middle ground for problems that need fixing, but do not warrant shutting a restaurant down.

“For a facility who is maybe right on the margin, there’s nothing really terrible going on, they’re not really in strong, not compliance, but there’s some minor changes we want to see, we will put a yellow bar on the green sticker that says this is a conditional approval. So as long as they make those changes, those improvements or just correct any kinda minor things then that yellow bar comes right back off,” said DiMenna.

“Red and green has always been what we’re used to, so I guess yellow is a caution and basically it’s telling you stop, look and listen and make sure you’re doing everything right,” said Barelas Coffee House owner Geri Gonzales.

Gonzales is onboard with the changes coming her way. “We want our customers to be healthy, to be happy you know we want to keep them safe that’s probably the bottom line of that,” said Gonzales.

As inspectors continue to get trained, routine inspections are on pause but DiMenna said not to worry. “We are still taking 311 calls. We’re still monitoring for anything that might be concerning whether it’s an infestation with insects or rodents or something like that, an allegation that somebody got sick by what they ate,” said DiMenna.

They are reassuring customers they can feel good when they see that green sticker. “I think it gives them reassurance you know, any place that we’ve gone. we do notice it, we don’t look for it but we do notice it,” said Gonzales.

DiMenna said they paused routine inspections last week, and hope to start them back up next week at the latest.

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