Food Safety Across the NHL

By now, you've already heard that Verizon Center was a (not-so-positive) focal point of ESPN's landmark study on food safety in stadiums and arenas, as well as Ted Leonsis' commendable response. Reports of Verizon Center's "mice droppings" were part of a state-by-state rundown, which also highlighted the rest of the league's arenas. Some other observations:

Madison Square Garden also suffered from similar problems as Verizon Center: "At one stand, inspectors found '53 mouse excreta' (38 on top of a metal box underneath the cash registers in the front food-prep area and 15 on top of a carbonated-beverage dispensing unit)."

Canada's six locales fared extremely well, with Toronto's Air Canada Centre and Ottawa's Scotiabank Place getting perfect scores. Edmonton's Rexall Place had the worst rating of the bunch: 25 percent of vendors had critical violations.

At HP Pavilion in San Jose, "inspectors found Chinese chicken salad had warmed to 60 degrees, about 20 degrees above a safe temperature." A warm version of a similar salad was highlighted at Minnesota's Xcel Energy Center: "Chicken strips for topping a Caesar salad were found at 105 degrees, when they should have been at least 140 degrees."

Showing some unique cuisine, Staples Center staffers had to throw out "9.5 pounds of sushi after inspectors found that it became too warm."

Florida's two arenas did not do well. BankAtlantic Center, home of the Panthers, had 67 percent of its vendors with critical violations for "soiled ice bins and coolers," while an inspector at Tampa's St. Pete Times Forum (88 percent) "saw an employee handle dirty dishes and then put away clean dishes without washing his/her hands or changing gloves. The same location lacked soap at a hand sink."

The most interesting findings came from Chicago's United Center, which earned a perfect score with a very big caveat: "Chicago health inspectors inspect vendors while the stadiums are empty, when no workers are preparing or serving food." Hmmm...

The worst violation, in my opinion, came from RBC Center, home to the 2011 all-star game: "Inspectors cited one vendor after watching employees handle raw, breaded chicken while loading fryers and then handling cooked food without changing gloves or washing hands. The employees placed cooked chicken back in the same container used to pre-portion raw chicken before cooking."

Overall, ESPN is to be commended for compiling such a comprehensive survey. Although food safety has been in the news a lot lately, this is the first study of its kind and magnitude to examine most of the major professional sporting venues in the United States and Canada.