THE SANITARIAN’S FILE
By Robert W. Powitz, Ph.D., MPH
The Best of the Best:
Portable Tools for
the Food Sanitarian
It was about 15 years ago while working
for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
as defendant’s sanitarian that I noticed
something amiss when the plaintiff’s
expert tried to measure the internal temperature of a thin, cooked meat patty
als, several manufacturers incorporated
changes into their instruments’ design.
To assuage doubts about our impartiality, please be assured that the field
equipment presented in this column are
the ones we regularly use on the job.
Over the years, we developed an evaluation form to present our findings in a
factual and unbiased logical manner.
We buy most of our instruments
through manufacturers, dealers and distributors; those that are donated to us
for evaluation are done so with no
strings attached. If any instrument does
not pass muster, so be it. Our motto
remains: There is no special dispensation for largesse. It is what it is.
with a bi-metal thermometer. That single incident prompted me to take
a critical look at the use and misuse of field instrumentation I was using
at the time and those that were available to regulatory practitioners.
Together with Jim Balsamo, Director of Environmental Health and Safety at
Tulane University, we started on a quest to seriously evaluate the field instruments
we were using during our kitchen inspections and food plant audits. It didn’t take
us long to recognize that some of our field instruments were better than others—
and where improvements to both the instruments and their instructions would
benefit field utility and marketability. We started to acquire the latest portable
field instruments available and use them (as well as abuse them) during our consulting field work.
To find the ones that are the most rugged, accurate and affordable portable
instruments with the greatest utility, we patterned our evaluations similar to
Consumer Reports. Without bias, we wrote about the good, the bad and the ugly in
a regularly appearing column in the Journal of Environmental Health. And we did so
without incurring the wrath of those we panned. We also began conducting
numerous hands-on workshops around the country in which we offered our experiences with these instruments to regulatory and industry sanitarians; where we
also got their feedback, opinions and ideas. Because of our evaluations and tutori-
Editor’s note: The opinions expressed about any product in this column either
expressly or implied is solely and completely those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views or opinions of the publisher of Food Safety
Magazine.
Criteria and Selection
Methods
A bit of background information
about our evaluation methodology is in
order. We are in the forensic business
and often travel considerable distances
to serve our clients. The instruments we
use in the field are often subjected to
environmental extremes by being carried in a car, in the belly of a plane, or
by an express mail carrier to the job site.
Additionally, we use these instruments
in a variety of settings from food manufacturing plants to large institutional
kitchens, to fast food and fine restaurants, caterers, grocery stores, food warehouses and temporary food operations,
just to name a few. When we are at the
work site, there is little opportunity to
retrieve a specialized instrument from
our office to help us measure any problematic environmental parameters we
may encounter. Therefore, our instrument kit is designed to help us measure
or evaluate most, if not all food safety-related criteria listed in the Food Code.
We want to emphasize that the
instruments we reviewed and listed in
the “Best of the Best” are designed for
field use and are most suitable for the
itinerant sanitarian or quality control
technologist. Food safety instruments
used exclusively in-house; that is, not
subjected to the environmental
extremes of transporting them from
