Ship sanitation inspections: an upclose look at the Vessel Sanitation Program - Behind The Scenes

"What a coincidence!" Hubert Buelacher, Crystal Harmony food & beverage manager, said. "We were in Victoria three days ago and the Canadian National Health Department inspectors came aboard for a surprise inspection. They gave us 100 percent!"

It was a coincidence, because I had gone to San Francisco, where Crystal Cruises' Crystal Harmony was turning around for her summer-long voyages to British Columbia and Alaska, to find oat about the U.S. Vessel Sanitation Program and its inspections.

Many people, even some who have taken a dozen or more cruises, are only vaguely or not at all aware of the Vessel Sanitation Program. Yet it is an important development in the world of cruise ships. It works like this: every vessel that carries 13 or more passengers, and calls at foreign ports and also at a U.S. port, is boarded at least twice a year by U.S. Department of Health officials, who take a close look at food safety and sanitation on the ship. The inspections are never announced in advance

The inspectors fill out a "Vessel Sanitation Inspection Report" with 42 items to be checked. Each item has a value of one to five points, the total adding up to 100. A "Satisfactory" score is 86 or higher. A perfect score isn't attained often--the slightest slip takes points off. The Crystal Harmony had been inspected in Juneau and received 91 points just a month before the Canadian inspectors awarded the ship 100 points--yet the U.S. and Canadian programs are identical.

In this case, Buelacher told me, a refrigerator that was checked at 6 a.m. on the morning of the U.S. inspection and was perfectly all right (each piece of food-handling equipment is checked and the results entered in a log several times each day) had ceased operating by 10 a.m. when the inspector opened it. Because it hadn't been needed in the interim, there was still "food in a non-operating refrigerator." That cost a bunch of points.

The program started in the U.S. in 1975, following several major disease outbreaks on cruise ships. Congress directed the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to do something, and the cruise lines cooperated. The program is voluntary, but every line joins in. And, happily, fees paid by the lines pay the costs of the program.

The breadth of the Inspection Report and its detail seemed overwhelming, at least to me, a single person whose Kitchen Sanitation Program consists of occasionally remembering to take a swish with a damp cloth at the kitchen counter. The CDC's full Inspection Report starts with Disease Reporting, examining if the ship's doctor has kept a medical log and reported any disease discovered. This initial item counts for five points.

The Potable Water section of the report took me down steep, narrow, iron stairs into the cavernous engine room with assistant chief engineer Andreas Sukke, who pointed out how the engineers maintain the purity of the ship's water supply with daily checks and rechecks of the half-dozen dials and meters that log the slightest variation in chemical imbalance. Five items here total 23 points.

Back up ondeck all was fresh air and sunshine. It was one of those beautiful fog-free days in San Francisco, with the bright orange span of the Golden Gate Bridge gleaming in one direction, the long, gray Bay Bridge in the other, and the sharp-edged skyline running spectacularly up and over the city's seven hills The deck officers are in charge of the swimming pools and hot tubs, where there is twice daily checking of water purity and equipment safety. Two items, four points.

Then it was time to take a look at the Inspection Report's 800-pound gorilla: Food Safety. Marcelle Haywood, Crystal Harmony sanitation officer--an attractive South African who is a microbiologist, hygienist, and hazard analyst--gave me the grand tour of the dining rooms, store rooms, and galley.

Food Safety is separated into sections in the report. Personnel covers things like chefs' and kitchen workers' knowledge of hygienic food-handling and how often hands are washed. Haywood said the sharp-eyed inspectors are on the lookout for the slightest deviance from the rules. Three items to watch for a total of nine points.

The rood itself is checked at each stage of storage, preparation, transportation, and display and service. Every step is logged. Woe be to the chef whose log is not up-to-date. For instance, it is an inviolable rule that once any item of food is handled, it must be consumed within tour hours or it is thrown out. Sous chef Gabon Merci pulled a log sheet at random to show me an example.

At 7 a.m. melons were taken from a refrigerator. A slim food thermometer (almost everyone in the galley carries one) was inserted into one, the temperature at the center was 37 degrees, as it should be. The exteriors of the melons were washed with a chlorine solution of 100 parts per million; next, the fruit was cut into slices, and then went into a blast chiller to bring the temperature back down to the proper level.

Three hours later the melons were taken to a buffet. By 11 a.m. those that had not been eaten were taken away. That night they were ground up, the water drawn off, and what remained was disposed of at sea by burning. (In an aside, I told the ship's food & beverage manager that I had many times heard passengers say they hated to see so much food "wasted." Buelacher assured me there was actually very little waste. It was his job to order only as much as would be consumed.) Food Protection makes up 10 items, totaling 23 points.

Galley Equipment includes all non-food-contact surfaces' and all food-contact surfaces' design, construction, and maintenance. Dishwashing equipment, for instance, must rinse with a chlorine solution, then wash at 160 degrees, and finally sanitize at 170 degrees. The dishwasher itself must be disassembled and sanitized daily. (If I tried to keep up these standards at home, I'd be eating all my meals in restaurants.) Thirteen items, 20 points.

The next section covers Miscellaneous Facilities, such as decks and bulwarks, proper lighting, humidity and condensation control. New ships have all stainless steel surfaces--no more paint to chip and peel. All corners are rounded and vertical surfaces either touch the floor (at a rounded angle) or are at least four inches above the floor for ease of cleaning underneath. (Nowadays, Vessel Sanitation Inspectors are flown, at cruise lines' expense, to the shipyards when almost every new ship is being built, to advise.) Five boxes to check, five points.

Waste disposal, toxic storage, anti pest control finish the list with the final three items for 11 points. If a ship miraculously gets every item correct, a perfect score of 100 is awarded.

Some ships hit consistently high marks; others always seem to be in lower ranges. It's often simply a matter of the age of the vessel. Older ships, designed and built before some of the modern hygiene-related concepts, are clearly more difficult to keep up.

Usually, a particular cruise ship should not be bypassed only because of a less-than-perfect rating. A few points taken off, even a 10 point penalty, would seldom be enough reason to choose another ship. The QE2, which entered service in 1969, scored 85, one point below a passing grade, in an inspection in early January 2003, yet I would never pass up an Atlantic crossing on the QE2, which is truly one of history's greatest passenger ships, for that reason alone. (On her January 23 reinspection, a passing score of 92 was earned.)

Fortunately, the great majority of ships do pass the inspections--of the 153 vessels listed on a recent "Green Sheet," only five had "Not Satisfactory" scores. If a vessel scores below 86, the officers must immediately come up with a plan of "Corrective Action," and the ship is quickly reinspected. If the inspectors feel a vessel is actually a threat to passengers, that ship can be ordered not to sail--a rare occurrence.

As a terminally cynical journalist. I had my usual "you'll have to show me" attitude when I boarded the Crystal Harmony. By the time I walked off, after seeing the multiple layers of care taken to assure healthy conditions, I was convinced that most cruise ships are a safer place to eat than almost anywhere else. In a turbulent world, where we sometimes seem to see danger everywhere, at least that's one worry put behind us.

The Centers for Disease Control makes it easy tot passengers to sec its complete, up-to-date information on every cruise ship. The latest scores for all ships are published in the "Green Sheet" (actual title: "Summary of Sanitation Inspections of International Cruise Ships"). The "Green Sheet" is available online at http://www2a.cdc.gov/nceh/ vsp/vspmain.asp; through the CDC fax-back service by dialing 888-232-6789 and requesting Document No. 510051; or by writing Chief, Vessel Sanitation Program, National Center for Environmental Health, 4770 Buford Hwy., NE, Mailstop F-16, Atlanta, GA 30341-3724 (a copy of the most recent Sanitation Inspection Report on an individual vessel may be obtained by writing to this same address).

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