title: The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Response on Food Safety Violations Observed in Southern Nevada Food Establishments
Creators: name: Morales, Samantha
Publisher: name: University of Nevada, Las Vegas
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/0406gha72
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2023

description: Food poisoning is a common term used to describe what is actually foodborne illness. Despite the fact these illnesses can become deadly, foodborne illnesses are endemic and common in the United States. Nonetheless, they are completely preventable simply by following proper food safety procedures. The Food and Drug Administration identified the most common foodborne pathogens responsible for most foodborne infections, as well as the five risk factor categories to target in order to decrease the risk of cases and outbreaks.To ensure foodborne outbreaks and cases are prevented, health authorities are tasked with conducting routine inspections on permitted food establishments. In Clark County, food establishment inspections are conducted by environmental health specialists and assess food safety risk factors. Food establishments are expected to be in compliance with the Southern Nevada Health District’s food regulations. A lack of compliance can result in fees, reinspections, and even closures. This entire process aims to hold food establishments accountable and reduce the risk of foodborne illness in the public. The COVID-19 pandemic changed the way many operations functioned. Even routine human behavior was changed simply due to the fear and the unknown surrounding COVID-19. Furthermore, mandates, executive orders and emergency directives enacted by the Governor of Nevada forced businesses around the state to adapt their operations and business models. Nonetheless, in Southern Nevada, environmental health specialists continued to conduct the same routine inspections of permitted food establishments. This means there was accurate data demonstrating the food safety of food establishments in Southern Nevada prior to and after the pandemic response was initiated. The objective of this study was to identify changes in violations observed during routine inspections of permitted food establishments within Southern Nevada after the pandemic response was initiated. To accomplish this, we analyzed inspection reports from 2019 and compared them to inspection reports from April 1st 2020 to December 31st 2020. We determined if there was a statistically significant change in the mean number of violations observed within the two analysis periods using parametric and bootstrap resampling statistics to ensure accurate results. We further analyzed the data to determine if changes were observed more often in specific violation categories. All violation categories including total, critical, major, and good food management practices (GMP) resulted in an improvement in mean violations prior to and post-pandemic response. The largest change was observed in the total violations category, with a 0.399 improvement. The smallest change was observed in the critical violation category, with a 0.071 improvement. While all categories resulted in an improvement that was statistically significant using both parametric and bootstrap methods, all improvements were less than one violation. This calls to address the potential importance of this less than one violation improvement in regard to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic response had on food safety. While this small improvement may not be enough to determine future preparations in food safety, it is important to continue studies on this topic in order to get a better understanding of those extreme facilities that had large improvements or significant worsening of scores during this time, as well as the specific violations with the most amount of change observed.