Legend failed its health check by CDC last month but passed on retest

**Ally** · 11-02-2006, 04:54 AM

A Carnival Cruise Lines ship scheduled to host a Nov. 16 luncheon at Port Everglades for up to 200 marketing executives from South Florida failed its public health inspection last month.

It marked the first time a ship from a major cruise line failed a health inspection in the last two years.

The Florida Direct Marketing Association usually conducts its monthly meetings at the Westin Fort Lauderdale hotel. This month, the lunch was arranged aboard Carnival Legend, currently doing eight-night Caribbean cruises. Described in a press release as an "elegant, seated four-course lunch," the event is to feature speakers such as Carnival President Bob Dickinson and Office Depot Corp.'s director of community involvement, Mary Wong.

But in a relatively rare slip, Carnival Legend was inspected in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 14 and failed. On a scale of 1 to 100, ships must be graded at least 86 to be considered satisfactory. Carnival Legend received a 71, the second-lowest score of any ship inspected by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control since 2004.

Most of the problems noted by inspectors related to food preparation, such as potentially hazardous foods like cream-based puddings that weren't adequately chilled after cooking. A report on the inspection said cooling of foods was not properly monitored, discard date labels were missing from some stored foods and chlorine sanitizing solutions in some galleys and bars were too weak or too strong when tested.

The report also noted chocolate fingerprints on several food containers and a curtain to a walk-in pastry refrigerator that was heavily soiled with food debris.

Carnival spokesman Tim Gallagher said the 2,667-passenger ship was reinspected on Tuesday at Port Everglades and got a score of 98. Carnival Legend had passed eight previous inspections since its debut in 2002.

"The ship has had a very good history of passing," Gallagher said.

A spokeswoman for the CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program confirmed that Carnival Legend has been reinspected, but declined to release the score. "The final report for the inspection hasn't been reviewed," spokeswoman Lisa Baumier said.

The CDC conducts several hundred ship inspections each year. Since 2004 only 21 inspections have resulted in failing grades, and of those only six involved large ships from well-known cruise lines such as Carnival.

Most of the ships that fail are small, or sail for lesser-known cruise lines that may not call at U.S. ports very often.

Keith Fletcher, president of the Florida Direct Marketing Association, said Wednesday he wasn't aware that the ship had flunked, but that it wouldn't affect plans for the lunch and that members "probably" wouldn't be upset about eating on the ship despite the failing grade.

(Sun-Sentinal.com)