PITTSBURGH — A lot has changed in the food industry since January 2000 when the Allegheny County Food Safety Rules & Regulations were last updated: Food trucks and mobile food kitchens are much more prevalent, shared kitchens have become a thing, and open-air dining options have only become even more popular with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Those are some of the reasons why the Allegheny County Health Department has started the process of overhauling the regulations, revising and clarifying rules that Otis Pitts, a deputy health director, acknowledges had gotten unwieldy and confusing. The process has led to draft regulations of Article III of the Allegheny County Code, and a 75-day comment period leading up to a late January 2022 public hearing. The Board of Health could vote on the proposed regulations sometime in the spring before sending it to Allegheny Council Council for its approval. The new rules and a fee schedule could be in effect by early 2023.
The regulations’ purview is vast: It governs food safety, inspections and compliance for not only restaurants and food trucks but school food service, food banks and festivals where food is served. Pitts, who presented an overview of the changes at Wednesday afternoon’s Board of Health meeting, said the food safety rules and regulations have become scattered, redundant and hard to follow.
“Our goal is for the order of the material to be more intuitive, simply being easier to comprehend,” Pitts said.
One glaring area: The classification in the code of food establishments. That’s an important section, which sets up the planning requirements, fees and inspections. There are 40 right now.
Read more in the Pittsburgh Business Times.
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