Guess Whats Coming With Dinner?
For all intents and purposes an entire City department seems to have been orphaned by the past few municipal administrations.
Unfortunately, too few people take the health inspectors seriously. This includes the federal government, the Rizzo administration, the courts and especially the people who are shelling out tax money for nonexistent public health protective measures.
The only federally funded programs go into the most visible and politically hot health problems — venereal disease treatment, rat control, air pollution and lead paint poisoning. But the coffers are always empty when it comes to providing funds for the routine, day-to-day chore of establishing a respectable level of food sanitation in restaurants and food centers.
The City administration budgets millions to the Department of Public Health but somehow the money never seems to filter down to provide enough inspectors on the street.
In the mayor’s 1972 budget, 12¢ out of every revenue dollar was earmarked for "conservation of health." After Philadelphia General Hospital received its share, neighborhood clinics took their bite and community mental health got its allocation, there was very little left for the department’s program involving the enforcement of the pure food codes and the regulation of public food sanitation.
The aspects of environmental health that affect every Philadelphian, in terms of the restaurants he patronizes and the food he eats, receive about the same fiscal underwriting as the city’s program for museums and playgrounds.
This bizarre juggling of priorities bewilders insiders but they must admit that things are getting better. In 1971 they received slightly more than $1 million to combat filthy food, and the year before that their share amounted to something less than $700,000.
EVERY PHILADELPHIA NEIGHBORHOOD from center city to the Jungle suffers from inadequate food sanitation. Every type of store and eating place is suspect and every economic group — rich or poor — exposes itself to sickness and even death as a result of the unsanitary food handling practices that are rampant throughout this city.
A few areas are especially difficult to police. The restaurants in Chinatown have always been a headache to health inspectors because of the peculiar nature of Oriental cuisine in which meals are partially cooked, stored at germ-incubating temperatures and then reheated without refrigeration, providing an ideal environment for bacteria to multiply. The proximity of Chinatown to crumbling Skid Row has traditionally caused constant problems due to the swarms of rats that migrate nightly from the Tenderloin into the darkened restaurant district.
But this is the "Year of the Rat" in Chinese culture and one Health Department inspector, assigned to Chinatown, observed that the oldtimers may be reluctant to call in the exterminators because they consider it sacrilegious to harm rats — which are sacred creatures during 1972.
A number of Chinatown restaurants have flunked their sanitation inspections again and again and the Department of Health has scheduled action against them in Common Pleas Court. Among them:
• Dragon Gate at 913 Race Street
• The Magic Fan at 146 N, Tenth Street
• The China Castle at 939 Race Street
• China Palace at 1000 Race Street
• China Village at 917 Race Street
