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Inadequately refrigerated food truck sends Valley sanitarians scrambling
and Brandon Klein
YOUNGSTOWN
Health department sanitarians were busy Thursday visiting Mahoning County restaurants that reportedly received perishable food from an inadequately refrigerated truck police stopped in Pennsylvania, and asked restaurateurs to discard the food.
“When we meet with the food vendors, they are agreeable, and they understand they have to throw it out — and they do,” said Patricia Sweeney, Mahoning County health commissioner.
Sixteen of the restaurants are within the county health department’s jurisdiction and one is in Youngstown, which is in the jurisdiction of the Youngstown City Health Department.
The Mahoning County restaurants were on a list of 21 Asian restaurants in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties that reportedly received food Wednesday from that truck, which was stopped Wednesday evening in Mahoning Township, Lawrence County, Pa.
The list was supplied by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
The truck, last inspected Aug. 13 by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, originated from the New Yung Wah Co. in McKees Rocks, Pa.
At the Main Moon restaurant on Belmont Avenue, Youngstown, the restaurateur discarded 200 pounds of meat into the trash bin Thursday morning, as ordered by a city health department sanitarian, and poured bleach over it, all in the sanitarian’s presence, said Erin Bishop, city health commissioner.
Other restaurant owners who could be reached Thursday said there was no chance of spoiled food reaching customers because they always inspect their products for freshness.
“We never had a problem before,” said Jay Dong, manager of Royal Grill Buffet, 267 Boardman Canfield-Road in the Boardman Plaza.
A man named Gene, who did not give his last name, spoke on behalf of his mother, Sue Zhang, owner of Girard Wok, 44 W. Liberty St. He said the products they received Wednesday were fresh.
He said New Yung Wah informed them the spoiled products on the truck were rejected by another restaurant and were being returned to the company.
Gene said most of their products are delivered by Sysco, based in Harmony, Pa., but that company doesn’t supply all their Chinese spices.
The county health department inspected Little Hunan, 4748 Mahoning Ave., Austintown. The restaurant received shrimp the health department considered the only item contaminated, said Jason Fritz, restaurant manager.
“We voluntarily threw away the shrimp,” he said. This is the second time the restaurant had to deal with discarding meat and poultry from a food truck. That occurred in May with a different company. The restaurant then changed to New Yung Wah, Fritz said.
“It’s really bad luck,” he said. “We’re victims in this as well.”
Little Hunan will change companies again, he added. “It’s something we can’t control.”
Sanitarians did not impound or prohibit the consumption of any food at the Main Moon restaurant in Hubbard, said Dr. James Enyeart, Trumbull County health commissioner.
That’s because the restaurateur documented to the sanitarians the food received from the truck there was in a frozen state, Dr. Enyeart explained.
“They did nothing wrong,” Dr. Enyeart said of management and staff at that restaurant. “Their past inspections have been, for the most part, clean,” he said, calling the ownership of that restaurant credible and reputable.
In addition to visiting the restaurants, the Mahoning County Health Department sanitarians visited all Asian food vendors at the Canfield Fair to determine whether they had received any of the food delivered by the truck, Sweeney said.
Restaurateurs need to be vigilant about the safety of the food when it is delivered to them, Sweeney said. “They shouldn’t take it in if it’s not at the proper temperature.”
Sweeney said her department also used its Notify Now recorded telephone message delivery system to alert every county food vendor to the problem regarding food delivered by the New Yung Wah truck.
This is the third time since 2013 that spoiled food was either headed to or made it to the Valley.
In August 2013, a box truck full of spoiled meat and vegetables was headed for at least nine restaurants in the Youngstown area and western Pennsylvania.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol stopped the truck at 7:20 a.m. on Interstate 75 in Butler County near Cincinnati.
A truck from a Cleveland-based company, with a refrigeration unit that was not working and that had been delivering perishable food to Asian restaurants in the Valley, was stopped in the same area of Pennsylvania in May, according to Vindicator files.
“I don’t think these two incidents [May and Wednesday] can be seen as a trend, necessarily. It certainly warrants further education, and we will be certain that that happens,” said Sweeney, whose department teaches food-safety courses in the Mandarin Chinese language.
The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency called the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday to report the New Yung Wah truck had been stopped on U.S. Route 422, just south of state Route 551.
That state’s agriculture department sent to the traffic stop scene a sanitarian, who inspected all the pork, fish, chicken, noodles and canned goods on the truck and found pork at 64 degrees and fish at 54 degrees, according to Dr. Lydia Johnson, director of food and laboratory safety for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
The state requires that food that needs refrigeration be kept at or below 45 degrees, she noted.
“It was just dirty, unsanitary” conditions aboard the truck, whose boxes had dried-on fruit and whose canned goods were cross-contaminated by the chicken, she said.
“We did not let the food be delivered,” Dr. Johnson said, adding the truck was impounded and the food aboard it discarded.
“There was a little bit of a problem because the driver did not speak English,” and the truck manifest was not in English, Dr. Johnson added.
“What’s most important to us is that the citizens do not receive this food,” Dr. Johnson said.
“Now we’re in the investigative mode, and we are following through with our enforcement actions,” which can include warning letters, citations and fines, she added.