NEW YORK The city's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said its health inspectors failed about one-quarter of the restaurants they examined during the year ended June 30, with nearly half of them flunked because of problems with rats.
In a report released Thursday, the health department said restaurants failed to win a passing grade in about 25 percent of the of the inspections that were conducted during fiscal 2007. It indicated that the failure rate hovered around 20 percent in fiscal 2006.
In 48 percent of the failed inspections, the city’s health inspectors cited “signs of active rats.”
The statistics were released as part of the Mayor’s Management Report, which reviews the performance of city agencies on a semi-annual basis.
City health inspectors were embarrassed earlier this year after a pack of rats overran a KFC-Taco Bell restaurant in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. Footage of the rats in the restaurant was widely broadcast online and on television.