Yellowknife (Oct 25/04) - You've probably never found a mouse in your beef wellington or a termite in your tiramisu. You probably never will.

Thank Craig Nowakowski for that one.

Nowakowski is the leader of a team working behind the scenes to keep your food safe. They're like the ozone layer: you'll never see them, but you should be glad they exist.

He's the senior officer with the Stanton Territorial Health Authority's Environmental Health Office, and works with two colleagues to monitor everything from sewage to air quality to food storage.

Food safety is only part of the mandate, but Nowakowski's office still makes two or three trips to every serving establishment in the city each year. He reckons there are "just over a hundred" of them in Yellowknife.

Asked to rate this city's restaurants on a scale of one to five -- with one meaning numerous health violations and five meaning none -- Nowakowski said "over 80 per cent are fours and fives."

"A few may drop to a one from time to time, but come up after inspections," he said.

"There aren't a lot of problems here; we're comparable to anywhere in the south or better."

Inspections are unannounced. Officers look for such things as proper food storage and disposal, hygiene, dishwashing, and food temperature.They even check bathrooms to make sure they have hot water and soap for customers.

"You look for mice, cockroaches, any kind of infestation, but to be honest we don't get a lot of it in Yellowknife, it's very rare."

Nowakowski has his horror stories -- a cockroach found in a dish of pasta, a restaurateur who chased an inspector out of the kitchen with a meat cleaver, a sewer that backed up into a kitchen -- but those were all in the south.

"I think we have good restaurants here, on the whole," he said.

Nowakowski said the main concern is food temperature. There is a "danger zone" between 4C and 60C where bacteria grow readily if food is left out.

"Temperature abuse is the biggest source of food-borne illness by far," he said.

Some of the more common temperature problems Nowakowski sees are coolers not working, food thawing at room temperature, and perishables not properly covered or stored.

Even the heat of a dishwasher can be an issue.

Also common are structural problems like broken tiles, and improper cleaning of walls, floors or food processors.

Hygiene problems centre around hand-washing, either because soap and towels are insufficient or because employees don't wash their hands with soap after handling raw food, coughing, sneezing, or taking out the garbage.

Another element of Nowakowski's work is responding to complaints filed by restaurant customers.

He stressed that the process is completely confidential.

"I think people don't always know who to talk to or they can't be bothered, or they don't know it's confidential," he said.

Nowakowski said Environmental Health receives around a dozen complaints each year.

The office takes the information, investigates and then gets back to the complainant with inspection results.

Officers then work with the establishment to rectify the matter. "Owners are pretty co-operative once they realize we're not out to get them but to help them," he said.

Environmental Health operates on the basis of the Eating or Drinking Establishments regulations in the Public Health Act, but Nowakowski said some legislation needs to be changed.

"Our regulations are from the '70s, and they really need to be updated," he said. "New bacteria have been studied in the last 25 years and (the legislation) doesn't reflect that."

The regulations also fail to mention the glass washers so common in restaurants and bars, and aren't up to date on sanitizers.

Safety classes optional

As well, the regulations don't mandate health safety classes for any employees.

In theory, a restaurant worker could go his entire life without food safety training.

Environmental Health teaches classes but they aren't mandatory here as they are in other Canadian jurisdictions.

Gillian Burles, senior policy advisor with the Department of Health and Social Services, said updated legislation is coming, and could be ready in six to eight months.

She said the NWT will likely "end up following Alberta and B.C., where regulations are quite new."