S.T.O.P.'s Position on Restaurant Grading

Laurie Girand
Meeting of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
San Jose, CA
September 19, 2025

My name is Laurie Girand, I grew up in Palo Alto, and now live in Saratoga. and I am a food safety activist and Board Member of S.T.O.P. Safe Tables Our Priority, a national, grassroots nonprofit of victims of foodborne illness, their friends and and others concerned about pathogens in our food. S.T.O.P.'s mission is to prevent unnecessary illness and death from foodborne illness, and with respect to restaurants, the emphasis should be on the word unnecessary because we have rules designed to prevent the spread of disease through restaurants.

You know, I wasn't always an activist. Back in 1996, I was probably more like you... except that I was never asked to make a decision that might mean life or death to someone or would mean the difference between whether they lived lives of good health or those of chronic disability.

In 1996, I was going about my non-activist life when my daughter nearly died from drinking unpasteurized apple juice contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Even after that, I wasn't an activist, until I learned that practices in the food industry were known by government officials, like yourselves, to be potentially lethal to small children. Indeed, there had been multiple outbreaks associated with unpasteurized apple cider prior to the Odwalla outbreak, but no one in government seemed to think that consumers, taxpayers or voters deserved to know the basic facts. In government, other people decided for me whether it was ok for my daughter to risk her life by drinking unpasteurized juice. Their indifference is the reason my daughter now faces a lifetime of adverse health. Government indifference is the reason I NEED to be an activist.

Supervisor Simitian's proposal enables consumers to protect themselves from unclean, unsanitary and unhealthy restaurants by making available information that should be made available so that consumers can make informed choices. Contaminated food is distributed throughout the state of California and Silicon Valley to all manners of food suppliers, including restaurants. Repeatedly unsanitary restaurants not only violate health rules but blatantly disregard the barriers that keep pathogens from reaching their customers. For many customers, this is a matter of life or death.

S.T.O.P. believes that Supervisor Simitian's proposal should be stronger. Placards should be mandatory. But we do not believe that this weakness gives reason to vote against the proposal. We would rather see this proposal implemented than leave Silicon Valley consumers in the dark for a moment longer.

S.T.O.P. sees only one other reason you would consider voting against this proposal... you do not believe that consumers deserve to know what YOU now know: that repeatedly poor sanitation practices at a given restaurant could endanger their health and lives. If you choose today to vote in favor of keeping information about unsanitary practices obscured, then I ask that you think long and hard about what you will say when you are confronted by families after a child has died. When you knew it could happen, and stood by and did nothing to help those families protect themselves.

Thank you.