Tacoma Cracks Down on Dirty Diners
A new health ordinance forces restaurants, fish markets, and milk stores to secure city licenses or face closure.
You may not open a restaurant, a fish market, an ice cream parlor, an oyster house, or a milk store now without taking out a city license. There was a great splutter in the council when the ordinance came up last night. Rankin and Lynn opposed it; Turnbull also railed against the health department wanting new ordinances passed all the time. Dr. Sargentich declared he wanted the people's food supply protected and denied that the department was failing to enforce the recent pure food ordinance. He cited the fact that meat shops were now taking their meat in off the street, but noted he could not be expected to watch everything with only three inspectors when Seattle had about 80 and Spokane 22. Jamieson, Bell, Brand, Chapman, Giblett, Stewart, Russell, Wilkeson, Hawthorne, and Hawley stood by the health officer, and the ordinance passed.
“Restaurants and fish markets will have to get licenses now, and then clean up and keep clean, or else the health officer can put them out of business.”
Early 20th-century food safety battles laid the foundation for modern public health inspections. The friction between council members over staffing and regulatory costs remains a familiar echo in today's local governance debates regarding administrative oversight.
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