Shortly after eating a sandwich wrap and drinking a bottle of milk, Nick Deering sat in a state of disgust at Einstein's Cafeteria in Union South. His lunch Wednesday was satisfying and without poor taste, but he had just received some unsettling news — health officials found mouse droppings in Einstein's Cafeteria during a routine July inspection.

"It’s just not comfortable knowing that mice are running around in the cafeteria," Deering said after being told about the restaurant's most recent inspection report.

The University of Wisconsin senior said he rarely eats at Einstein's Cafeteria — maybe once every two months — and he has never felt sick as a result of eating any food on campus.
Despite the rare mouse droppings — and pest problems are uncommon with UW food services — Deering said the campus still seems like an overall clean place to eat. That is the kind of news UW and health officials like to hear during their lunches.

UW Environmental Health Services, a division of Health Services at 1552 University Ave., is contracted by the state to regularly inspect all food establishments on campus, from small ice cream stands to large residential cafeterias.

Randy Hentschel, director of Environmental Health Services, oversees all food inspections of the campus's 40 eateries. Each place is inspected regularly depending on its "complexity rating." Restaurants with a higher potential for sanitation problems, such as cafeterias, are checked the most often.

Of 81 inspections conducted since January 2007, UW health inspectors reported six cases of pest infestation at campus restaurants, a review by The Badger Herald found. There were mouse droppings at Einstein's Restaurant in July, a cockroach at Memorial Union's Daily Scoop in April and four cases of fruit flies at various eateries.

On a standard Wisconsin food inspection report, pest and rodent violations are considered less severe than other sanitation factors. Hentschel said mouse droppings are not as worrisome as food preparation, for example, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found pests are less likely to cause food-borne illnesses.

In the past nine months, UW health inspectors have reported 111 different cases of the more serious violations at campus eateries. Most violations were corrected on site by inspectors or resolved by a reinspection within two weeks.

In some instances, restaurant managers were unable to fix the problem quickly because it required a new piece of equipment or repair. Many dish machines were reported not reaching adequate final rinse temperatures and some had washing sinks that did not work properly.

In a few cases, restaurants corrected problems during a reinspection but then were not compliant during the next routine inspection. For example, health inspectors reported employees of Ingraham Hall Deli did not cover their personal beverages in the food prep area May 8. The same violation was reported during a routine July 13 inspection.

The most common violations on campus involved food storage or labeling (29 cases), dish washers or cleaning chemicals (27 cases) and hand washing (22 cases). A few places, like Elizabeth Waters Cafeteria in the Lakeshore residence hall, had perfect inspections.

A July 26 report on Elizabeth Waters Cafeteria says, "This unit was doing a great job with food handling and general sanitation. Temperatures were all proper, hand washing and glove use were good. Keep up the good work."

Sara Lindeke, a UW freshman and Elizabeth Waters Hall resident, said the perfect score "makes me feel very comfortable eating here." She eats at the cafeteria for lunch and dinner almost every day, and Lindeke said she has no fears about the food quality.

Hentschel said the three most common violations are pretty regular on campus because training is always a challenge with restaurants seeing a high turnover rate.

Carl Korz, who oversees food services for the two Unions, said about 40-60 percent of the Unions’ food staffs leave each year. He said the Unions spend thousands of dollars on vinyl gloves every year to follow a campus "no bare hands" policy.

"People are far safer now than they used to be," he said. "Is the customer in any danger during any of these points? Quite frankly, no."

Korz said hand-washing and some of the other violations appear frequently because leaders of UW food services hold their eateries to higher standards than necessary.

According to Hentschel, there has not been a food poisoning outbreak at UW for at least 20 years attributed to campus-produced food. He said there are complaints every now and then, but the illness is almost always due to a viral infection not related to food, such as the flu.

Outbreaks at UW have also never been attributed to mouse droppings or other pests, though there is more danger of infestation during the autumn season, Hentschel said. Pests are trying to escape the area's cold temperatures and depleting food supply. Cockroaches are more of a problem during the summer because the bugs flourish in damp and humid environments.

Road construction sometimes drives cockroaches into buildings because the connecting steam tunnels are natural bug havens for reproduction, Hentschel. The road construction rattles the tunnels and scares the bugs to search for more stable ground.

"Unless they're disturbed, they generally don't come into buildings," Hentschel added.
Bob Fessenden, who oversees UW Housing Food Services, said pests are rarely a problem on campus. The occasional mouse found scurrying around a cafeteria is more often of the lab variety, probably carried in by a student, he added.

Most food services at UW contract outside pest-controllers, which use preventive methods to control mice and insects. Korz said the Unions can be more difficult to monitor than private restaurants because the buildings are multi-purpose and old.

"There’s not a building on this campus that does not have a cockroach or a mouse in it," he said. "We try very hard obviously that all areas of the buildings are pest-free."

When the two Unions were built — Memorial Union in 1925 and Union South in 1971 — "pest control was not on the radar," Korz said. More important than complete eradication, he added, is the university's response time.

If pests or their feces are spotted, UW Health Services is contacted for an immediate inspection. Korz said campus food inspectors and restaurant managers have a good working relationship that allows everyone to improve sanitation quickly and easily.

Jim Long, manager of the Memorial Union's Rathskeller and Lakefront on Langdon, expressed a similar sentiment toward food inspections.

"Here it's more of a cooperative nature," Long said, comparing university inspections to private business inspections. If possible, the 13-year veteran of UW food service walks with inspectors to take notes and figure out solutions on the spot.

When told about the mouse droppings case at Einstein's Restaurant, Long was distressed as a manager.

"Personally, if we ever have had anything like that; it's inexcusable," he said.

To a couple friends in Einstein's Cafeteria Wednesday, the mouse droppings case was bad news but not bad enough to overcome a tradition. The group has an early brunch every week to enjoy one of the cafeteria's regular specials: General Tao's Chicken.

"I started to look at my Chinese food," said UW senior Ray LaBarge after he was told about the mouse droppings, "and then I continued eating."

LaBarge, an engineering student, said he has been eating at Einstein's Cafeteria too long to give up on it this late in his academic career. He might think about the mouse droppings again someday, but not on Wednesdays with friends and "the General."