Pennsylvania Restaurant Inspections
August 4th, 2005 | Published in DIY, Local Data, Public Records
Tim Darragh and Christopher Schnaars of the Allentown Morning Call used state restaurant inspection data to show that Pennsylvania’s “patchwork of food safety laws and public health agencies often fails to provide even minimal monitoring of restaurants and food retailers.” The investigation includes a side bar explaining how the paper got the data, a process that took months to accomplish. Two Lehigh Valley boroughs, Coopersburg and Emmaus (where I attended middle school), refused to provide the reports, saying they were not public records. The paper also posted the database.