The news has run from good to bad to worse since a pack of New York City rats found fame that shocked and repulsed a global audience three weeks ago.
The good news is that about a day after the dozen or so rats were seen on video going wild in a KFC-Taco Bell unit in Manhattan’s trendy Greenwich Village, most, if not all, of them were dead. Not so good is the fact that the video made it to international news broadcasts and still lives on the Internet, where it continues to appall consumers and stoke heated emotions between restaurant operators and city health officials.
Private exterminators hired by the operators of the unit—ADF Cos. of Fairfield, N.J., a Yum! Brands Inc. franchisee—sealed off the crevices and cracks in the foundation and killed the rodents through fumigation, traps or poison, a New York City Department of Health spokeswoman confirmed.
The bad news, rodent experts say, is that the deceased could have left behind 40,000 to 60,000 direct descendants, if the dead rats were as adept at procreating as they were at infiltrating the restaurant. And that’s not counting the estimated tens of millions more rats believed to live in the city.
The worse news is that the relationship between the industry and the city’s health inspectors—usually described as collaborative, cooperative and educational—has turned combative.
The city confirmed operators’ fears: At least 90 restaurants in New York have been closed since Feb. 26, the Monday after the rats got more international attention than an “American Idol” winner.
In addition, the incident is testing the relationship between Yum and ADF, which with more than 300 restaurants is one of Yum’s largest franchisees. ADF voluntarily closed nearly a dozen other stores—including a Pizza Hut in Queens—that had not recently been inspected.
At the same time, Louisville, Ky.-based Yum has hired internationally renowned rat control expert Bobby Corrigan—who once lived for a month in a rat-infested barn to better understand his adversaries’ lifestyles—to review the extermination policies and food safety practices covering the 220 units Yum and its franchisees operate in New York City.
Despite such steps, however, what remains unknown is how such a situation in a city that bills itself “the restaurant capital of the world” will affect dining frequency. Repeated phone calls and e-mails to the city’s official tourism boosters, NYC & Co., went unanswered.
The concern among operators of a backlash from consumers, who already fear foodborne illness following several high-profile outbreaks, was further inflamed when days after the rat video first circulated another video surfaced showing a health inspector sleeping at the bar of a restaurant he was ostensibly inspecting.
The mounting imbroglio has given new life to a long-running argument by restaurant operators that the city—if it wants to reduce the rodent population—should repeal a regulation that outlaws the installation and use of garbage disposal units in the sinks of commercial kitchens.
Restaurant operators charge that the two videos have produced an overzealous, heavy-handed inspections process by embarrassed inspectors. As a result, restaurateurs are being forced to close their outlets and pay fines for minor infractions that once merited only verbal warnings.
Among the 90 or so restaurants closed since the rat-related flap began is 78-year-old John’s Brick Oven Pizza.
“Obviously, there was bound to be some fallout, and one of the biggest things we are hearing is that the embarrassing position the health department finds itself in is making them throw the book at infractions that once generated nothing more than a verbal warning,” said Chuck Hunt, president of the New York City chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association.
“I can walk in the kitchen of any restaurant in the world and find something wrong,” he said. “Certainly, evidence of rodent infestation in a restaurant is a serious violation, but instead of being educators, we are hearing about these inspectors issuing fines for things that are not public health threats, like lights missing their shields or soap dispensers running low.”
A spokeswoman for the health department said that since the rat incident occurred the number of restaurant closures has probably tripled and the number of complaints from citizens about unsanitary health conditions they think they see in restaurants has jumped from an average 20 to 30 complaints per week to more than 60.
However, she noted: “Our policy has always been that inspectors cite violations when they see them. Our only mission is to enforce the health code and keep restaurants safe for customers. As always, restaurants that pose a threat to the health of customers will be closed.”
If operators believe they are being unfairly fined, she said there is an appeal process where restaurateurs can dispute the findings of an inspection in a health department tribunal hearing, where complaints are either dismissed or sustained.
Former city health inspector Mark Nealon, now president of Safe Restaurants Consulting Co., a Wantagh, N.Y.-based private, third-party food safety auditor whose portfolio of clients include many of New York City’s most distinguished restaurants and dinnerhouse groups, said many of his clients are scared about being unfairly fined and have called him to perform impromptu but immediate inspections before the city gets there.
“It’s going on all over the city,” he said. “Everybody is worried.”
Although the health department uses a 27-point checklist of health risks when examining an establishment, Nealon said most official restaurant health inspections are arbitrary, take less than 20 minutes and are intended to generate cash for the city through fines. He said public health inspectors probably visit five establishments in an eight-hour period.
By contrast, he said it takes him a day just to inspect one or two operations and to sit down with the owners to point out risks on the premises.
“With those guys, it’s ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am,’” Nealon said of his ex-employer. “They have gotten away from the educational aspect of the job and are using it as a revenue generator for the city. I don’t think there’s any secret that they are supposed to be a cash cow.” A department spokeswoman said the average health inspection takes an hour to an hour and a half.
Hunt of the NYSRA said he hopes the incident prompts the city to reconsider its age-old ban on garbage disposals in commercial kitchen sinks.
“If we could use trash disposals, so much of a restaurant’s wet garbage would move through the sewer system,” he said. “It would bring down the cost operators pay for garbage removal. It’s the wet trash put in garbage bags that the rats feed on, and it generates the bulk of the weight trash haulers charge for removal.”
But Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, said that allowing commercial businesses to use garbage disposal units in New York City—a right that households acquired just 10 years ago—would overwhelm the city’s sewage treatment system and threaten water quality.
Although at least 11 major cities allow their restaurant establishments to use garbage disposal units—including Philadelphia—Michaels said the beneficial bacteria New York depends on to break down organic waste in treatment plants would make the process less effective and fail to meet federal clean water standards the city is obligated to exceed.
Meanwhile, Peter Elliot, a restaurant reviewer for the Bloomberg news service, said that while fast feeders in the city might be tainted by consumers’ guilt-by-association sentiments, he doubted that tableservice operators should worry about a downturn in dining frequency among tourists and visitors.
He said most visitors expect a certain amount of scruffiness in New York—LaGuardia Airport’s low-tech terminals or perhaps a scampering cockroach in a hotel bathroom—as part of the city’s allure.
“I just don’t see the rat problem being that big of an issue, even though, I suppose, those are the worst words a restaurateur ever wants to hear: ‘You have rats,’” Elliot said. “I think it is part of the adventure in coming here.”