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Meet New York City’s Filthiest Grocery Stores

  • Spence Cooper
  • October 15, 2013

The reasons to grow as much of your own organic food as possible and/or buy from your nearest Farmers’ Market continues to add up. New York World recently featured a story regarding the cleanliness of New York City supermarkets.

Supermarket Sanitation

 (Source)

Reporters diligently sifted through inspection reports over the last five years from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets to find “critical deficiencies”in New York City supermarkets the state deems “an immediate threat to the public health and welfare”

“By typing in an address, intersection, zip code or neighborhood, you can see which chain grocery stores have had serious violations between Jan. 2008 and July 2013, and what those violations were. You can also see if conditions in that store have been getting better or worse.”

Surprisingly, not even upscale neighborhoods were spared from the filth that permeates some New York grocery stores.

“Poultry grinders encrusted with old food and fresh mouse droppings near the bakery and loading area were among the 12 serious violations received by the Whole Foods market on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side from July 2012 to July 2013, the third-highest number of all the city’s chain supermarkets during that period.”

The Melrose Ave. location of Pioneer Supermarkets in the Bronx was written up 13 times during the same time period. Inspectors found hundreds of “fresh shiny appearing rat droppings”in several areas of the store.

In 2012, inspection reports showed that about 200 “live adult and nymph German cockroaches”were found crawling in the store’s basement as well as inside boxes of Goya beverages.

Most Disgusting Supermarket

Based on the inspection reports, Met Foods on Fulton Street in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, has had the most serious violations for the past 6 years, totaling 72 in all. Inspectors have found hundreds of mouse droppings, six mouse carcasses, and rodenticide on the bread shelves.

Met Foodmarkets

 (Source)

Manhattan’s worst offender is also a Met Foods outlet, on Amsterdam Avenue near 125th Street, with a total of 48 critical deficiencies, followed by the Gristedes on Third Ave. in Murray Hill, with a total of 44.

Best and Worst Chains

Trader Joe’s has one of the cleanest grocery store chains in New York City, with only one critical deficiency reported at its Sixth Ave. location since 2008.

Trader Joes Store

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The most abject chain based on health inspector citations is Associated, a network of independently operated stores with more than 130 outlets in the metropolitan area.

Over the past five years, state inspectors have cited its member stores for 739 critical deficiencies, followed by two other franchise-style networks: Key Food, with 668 violations, and C-Town with 447.

Meet New York City’s Filthiest Grocery Stores

 (Source)

Joe Estrada, 72, the manager of the Associated Supermarket on 14th St. and Eighth Ave. in Chelsea, said an exterminator usually comes twice a week to keep the rats and mice at bay. But the store has been cited for not having a sink for employees to wash their hands in the kitchen, warm cold cuts and (inevitably) rodent droppings.

Cleanest and Dirtiest Neighborhoods

The nine supermarkets in zip code 11208 have seen 189 critical deficiencies in the last five years. In Midtown West eight supermarkets received 151 violations. In Highbridge and Morrisania in the Bronx” zip code 10456″ inspectors found 128 critical deficiencies in the past five years.

In Queens, markets in Astoria, Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, Woodside, Addisleigh Park and Queens Village have nearly spotless records. Stores in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn and Manhattan’s West Village also score high.

Most Recent Offenders – Highest Number of Critical Deficiencies

The Garden of Eden in Brooklyn Heights, with 20 offenses. Among them was old encrusted meat residues on food contact surfaces, mold and grime in the area of the seafood area ice machine and “deep knife scores containing imbedded/dark matter across food contact surfaces”

Garden of Eden

(Source)

Whole Foods in upper Manhattan also had a high number of citations. Whole Foods spokesman Michael Sinatra did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

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