Unsafe food among new food and old food at a Broward supermarket, inspectors find
Repeatedly violating basic safe food storage rules caused a Davie supermarket to fail state inspection.
Previous Florida Department of Agriculture inspections say Mango Tree Supermarket, 6431 Stirling Rd., was known as “Foodtown” until earlier this fall. Tuesday’s inspection, by James Zheng and Timothy O’Neill, from Tuesday, says it flouted rules that any longtime grocer should know.
▪ In the backroom, the store received “two carts of freshly slaughtered halal beef” from Gray’s and Danny’s around 3:30 p.m. and stored the beef in the walk-in cooler. An hour later, beef that needed to be at or below 41 degrees measured 65 to 71 degrees. So, 1,121 pounds of beef got slapped with a giant Stop Sale. The inspectors allowed the store to get the beef cooled then released the Stop Sale.
▪ In the halal meat department, the hand wash sink next to the three-compartment sink didn’t have hot water, so was impossible to use for proper commercial hand washing.
▪ Four hours after they first cut into food, slicers and saws are supposed to be cleaned, rinsed and sanitized. But, in the Halal meat department, the band saw hadn’t been cleaned after more than four hours from first use.
▪ Applying those same rules to the cafe area, the milk steaming wand had been “only rinsed and scrubbed with a metal scrub pad and not properly cleaned after more than four hours of use.”
▪ Also in the cafe area, egg tarts and custard buns in the display case that needed to be at 135 degrees didn’t even measure close enough to be called “falling short” (71 degrees). The tray of chicken pastries was slightly better, 106 degrees, but still not up to snuff. A hat trick of Stop Sales smashed the egg tarts, custard buns and chicken pastries and sent them into the trash.
▪ A ham and cheese sandwich on top of the display shelves measured well over the 41 degrees maximum. Stop Sale, go directly to the garbage.
▪ The kitchen had a container of noodles date marked from Nov. 13. That’s 15 days before this inspection. Stop Sale. They were tossed.
READ MORE: Hairnets, shrink wrap, parchment paper in Palm Beach County made protein bars
▪ “Bags of freshly slaughtered halal chickens received around 3:30 p.m. and displayed in a large open-air freezer in front of the halal meat department” measured at 60 degrees more an hour after receipt. A big Stop Sale fell on all 185 pounds of that chicken from Gray’s and Danny’s. Unlike the beef, it wasn’t rescued. It was tossed.
▪ Another Stop Sale smacked unnamed “products found to contain undeclared sulfites.”
▪ The produce area hand washing sink couldn’t be used too often. Using it threatened to dump too much water on the floor because it was “missing a section of drain pipe, causing water to drain directly onto the floor when the faucet is turned on.”
▪ Another water problem in the produce area concerned “water found to be spraying from the heat exchange side of the condensing unit” in the walk-in cooler sprayed water onto the floor.
This story was originally published December 2, 2023 at 6:09 PM.
