Southwick Town Hall. (WNG File Photo)
SOUTHWICK – The Board of Health sent out their revised food permit regulations to food establishments in town on November 1.
In July, the Board of Health changed their regulations. Previously, any operating business in town that was considered a food establishment and didn’t pay for their food permit by the specified deadline date, a $150 fine would be issued.
With the deadline for this calendar year on January 1, if a food establishment doesn’t renew their permit within seven days after January 1, that business will be fined $50 each week for the next three weeks.
If the renewal payments aren’t made by the fourth week or by February 1, that establishment will be issued a fine of $50 per day and will consider the business to be operating without a permit and could be in danger of closing immediately.
Due to establishments not paying for their permits on deadline, the Board of Health felt it was appropriate to change the regulations.
“We’ve had quite a few issues with that this past calendar year,” said Jean Nilsson, a member on the Board of Health.
In May, Board of Health Director Tom FitzGerald informed the Westfield News that there were seven food vendors in Southwick that hadn’t paid their required permit fee to operate as a licensed food business in Southwick. The deadline to pay the fee was May 21.
The new regulations also includes an inspector having the ability to make a re-inspection due to a below average performance for the initial inspection. In the regulations, a substandard inspection is written as, “having risk factor and/or critical violations that are not corrected immediately during the inspection, or numerous non-critical violations including cleaning and structural issues which could contribute to a public health concern.”
If the same food establishment has to be re-inspected, the Board of Health could vote to have a $100 fine come into effect, along with additional fines that can go up to $500. Although, if the violations still haven’t been corrected, the new regulations state the business will have to comply with one of the below penalties:
- Payment of a fine of not more than $500;
- Require re-certification of the person in charge and add additional food protection manager certification for other designated employees, as determined by the Board of Health;
- Hire a Food Safety Consultant approved by the Board of Health at the expense of the owner/operator to review current food safety practices, develop systems to prevent risk factor and critical violations from occurring, train employees, and conduct inspections to verify compliance with good food safety practices. Reports and findings from the consultant must be provided to the Board of Health;
- Suspension or revocation of the owner/operator’s Food Establishments Permit.
If any food establishments need an application for a food permit, the link to the application is on the Board of Health page on the Town of Southwick website.
