Inspectors lag on restaurant inspections

In late 2007, an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness sickened two dozen people at a Southampton restaurant, prompted state intervention and may have contributed to an elderly woman’s death.

Elsewhere, area diners have chewed on rodent limbs and old Band-Aids found in takeout food and salad bars in recent years, while one woman got hit with a $1,220 bill last fall after being hospitalized with food poisoning in Hadley. The alleged culprit?

A tainted hamburger.

These are among the complaints filed each year with local health inspectors, whose job it is to educate kitchen workers and prevent food-borne illness through preventive sanitary inspections at hundreds of food establishments in the Valley.

But a Gazette review of restaurant inspection files finds that many cities and towns are not keeping pace with the state’s sanitary code, which requires local health departments to conduct inspections at six-month intervals, or twice yearly.

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