Fans of the mobile food truck craze will be able to digest with greater ease now that the City Council has adopted food safety standards used by county health inspectors.

The council on Tuesday held the second reading of an ordinance adopting the latest changes to the county’s health and food safety code, which require public health officials to increase the number of annual inspections of each mobile food vendor from one to two and assign letter grades after each inspection. Any mobile food vendor who receives below a C will be forced to close.

The county’s roughly 6,000 mobile food vendors are also required to provide inspectors with a detailed route sheet showing where they will be setting up shop and at what time. The route sheet is intended to make it easier for health inspectors to find the food trucks and other vendors.

“We’ve always inspected all food facilities, including mobile food facilities,” said Terrance Powell, director of the public health department’s Bureau of Specialized Surveillance & Enforcement Environmental Health Division. “This ordinance is to simply disclose to the public in an organized way information to help them make objective choices as a consumer.”

Powell said food trucks have always been there, it just seems like there are more because of the increased media attention and marketing efforts of the businesses. He said a task force has been created to look at the food truck phenomenon and how they can be better regulated. A major concern is trash created by the trucks and who should be responsible for keeping streets clean.

The council’s action was merely a formality. Since 1963, Santa Monica has delegated all public health and food safety enforcement to the county, at no cost to City Hall. Thus, as county public health and food safety laws change, City hall has, from time to time, incorporated those changes into the municipal code. The most recent incorporation was in 1998, according to a city staff report.

City staff is participating in the county’s task force. Food trucks have raised concerns amongst some in the Santa Monica business community who say the trucks are creating an uneven playing field as restaurants have to pay rent and sometimes assessments while food trucks only have to apply for and purchase a permit from City Hall to operate. The council has tried to create a compromise, setting up a food truck lot on Main Street where vendors congregate once a week.

“State law does not regulate competition and this gives rise to serious questions and examination that every municipality will have to conduct,” Powell said.

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