Some Mayors Enjoy Nibbling On Straw Men Before A Main Dish Of Crow

When the mayor went on the offensive about the city’s new letter-grade restaurant inspection system, he boasted that salmonella incidents dropped an entire 14 percent since the new system was implemented (and revenues went up!) and derided critics as “people that complain because they don’t want to keep their restaurants clean”. No one can argue with a straw man, but about that salmonella statistic:

DOH boasted of a 14 percent plunge in reported salmonella cases in the grading system’s first full year. But the numbers reflect only a minuscule drop in an infection rate that was negligible to begin with.

In fact, reported salmonella cases fell from 15 per 100,000 New Yorkers between 2007 and 2010 to 13.7 cases last year — a difference of 1 case per 70,000 people.

The data don’t even say how many salmonella infections were contracted in restaurants compared with home or anywhere else — nullifying any correlation with inspections . . . per se.

That last post-elliptical comment being a reference to the apparent preferential treatment some restaurants receive.