Park Bridge Homeowners Association - Plano, Texas

What do you do when you have to ensure the public food safety for a city of over 260,000 residents and additional hundreds of thousands of visitors and business travelers? If you're the City of Plano Health Department you simply excel at ensuring such a sanitary and safe food storage and preparation environment that you win the accolade as the "Eighth Safest City in the Nation" and top city in Texas for what basically amounts to "eating out!"

The February 2008 edition of Men's Health Magazine has just ranked Plano number eight in its listing of 101 cities, ranked according to their provision of a safe food supply. Plano topped 11 Texas cities included in the ranking. The ranking was based on food-borne illness per capita extracted from the Community Health Status Indicator Project, the Center for Disease Control's Wonder database, which focused on three of the most common food-borne illnesses: E. coli, salmonella and shigella-related infections.

Along with the data, they evaluated the states that had adopted the most recent Food and Drug Administration's uniform Food Code, which contains the most up-to-date rules for keeping restaurant kitchens clean. This all boils down to the fact that when you pull up a chair in a Plano restaurant, sail through a fast-food drive through, or eat with Aunt Edna at her retirement home cafeteria, that you'll only be coming away with the happy memory of a good meal and little else!

"You may tend to blame an illness on someone's errant sneeze or a contaminated handshake, but it could have been something you ate. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are more than 250 different food-related maladies out there waiting to drop down your gullet," read the article.

So who made the top ten list? Ranked in order from one to ten: Baltimore, MD; St. Louis, MO; Richmond, VA; Pittsburgh, PA; Tacoma, WA; Virginia Beach, VA; Chesapeake, VA; Plano, TX; Arlington, TX; and Fort Worth, TX.

"While the article in Men's Health was a surprise to us, the naming of Plano as the top city in Texas for food safety was not," said Tomeji Miller, the City's Health Manager. "Our regulatory inspections and educational programming, along with extensive food manager/food handler training, are major initiatives in providing our Plano residents and visitors a safe environment through eradication of disease potential. We have over 1,300 permitted food establishments and this past year staff completed over 3,400 on-site food inspections. We strive to provide on-site education during each inspection to gain voluntary regulatory compliance and to ensure noted violations in food preparation/sanitation aren't repeated."

While it's not nice to brag, the facts speak for themselves in saying that Plano did beat out what many consider the food capitol of Texas, the City of Austin, which came in at number 82 on the list. Lubbock, TX anchored the list at 101, with Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA; Corpus Christi, TX; Cleveland, OH; Tucson, AZ; Oakland, CA; Fremont, CA; Lincoln, NE; Jacksonville, FL; and Yonkers, NY comprising the remaining lowest rated cities.

(from the City of Plano website)