Could We Soon Check Any Restaurant’s Health Inspection Score Via Yelp?

One company is making restaurant health inspections public on the popular customer review website.
Could We Soon Check Any Restaurant’s Health Inspection Score Via Yelp?
Annie Wu
Updated:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in six Americans get sick from a foodborne illness every year, with 3,000 deaths and 128,000 hospitalizations annually.

When it comes to eating out at restaurants, consumers often depend on municipal health department inspection scores to assess whether a food establishment is safe to visit.

But each city has a different scoring system. Some use letter grades, others use a color-coded system, and still others implement different numerical scales.

And while some cities publish the restaurant scores on government websites, few people know how to access the information or would bother to try.

Data software company Socrata aims to resolve both problems at once with a program they’ve developed in partnership with local governments and Yelp.com, the customer review website. Socrata will translate the health inspection score into a standardized, universal 0 to 100 score, then post on Yelp each restaurant’s score. The program is called LIVES, for Local Inspector Value-Entry Specification.

A restaurant health inspection score on the customer review website, Yelp.com. (Screenshot/Yelp.com)
A restaurant health inspection score on the customer review website, Yelp.com. Screenshot/Yelp.com
Annie Wu
Annie Wu
Author
Annie Wu joined the full-time staff at the Epoch Times in July 2014. That year, she won a first-place award from the New York Press Association for best spot news coverage. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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