Food inspections: There's a Sacramento Co. app for that

If you have ever wondered about a restaurant’s health department rating as you’re walking past, there’s an app for that in Sacramento County.

A new application for smartphones at m.ffi.saccounty.net allows a user to search a map of all restaurants in the county and see their status. If you want more information, you can even download the most recent health inspection to your phone.

Sacramento County’s Environmental Management Department, which is the official name of Sacramento’s restaurant health inspectors, since 2007 has required restaurants to display a green placard in their front window.

That placard shows the place passed its safety inspection. If there is a minor food safety or code violation, the restaurant gets a yellow placard for a few days while it gets itself back to green. If there is big problem, the restaurant gets a red placard, and it gets shut down until the problem is fixed.

The smart phone application shows all the green pointers on the map and any yellows. Presumably it would show red, but there didn’t seem to be any as of the latest report, which was Sept. 14.

The placards aren’t just for restaurants. They must be displayed anywhere that sells or serves food, from cafeterias to supermarkets and even gas stations that have refrigerators and freezers for things like milk and ice cream.