Spadina fights its pest plague
‘Only Do So Much’
Cassandra Jowett, National Post
Published: Friday, April 03, 2009
In his 31-year career with Toronto Public Health, Jim Chan has seen more than his share of cockroaches, mice and rats while inspecting the city’s thousands of restaurants, supermarkets and other food premises.
And while he said Toronto’s food service industry is slowly becoming healthier overall, he still can’t believe what he sees every time he tours Chinatown and neighbouring Kensington Market.
More than a third of the city’s 56 closures in the past year have taken place in this area, with most inspection records noting rodent or insect infestations, or both.
Among them: The infamous Dumpling House rat incident in February, 2008, when blogTO (and then almost every other media outlet in town) ran a photograph showing rats sitting on a food preparation area near a window of the Spadina Avenue restaurant.
“I’ve been walking through the laneways quite often since the Dumpling House incident,” he said.
“If you take a tour of Spadina on the west side, you just shake your head when you look at the lack of responsibility in the maintenance of their own property.”
Mr. Chan said while occasional infestations are discovered city-wide in the more than 16,000 food premises, including 6,000 restaurants, these side-by-side neighbourhoods are continuously plagued due to the high density of restaurants and markets, the age of the buildings, and the unsanitary conditions found in and around some of the local businesses.
Toronto Public Health inspectors have responded by repeatedly closing down and charging dozens of businesses in the area bordered by College Street on the north, Spadina Avenue on the east and Dundas Street West on the south. Five, including four restaurants, were temporarily shut in March alone.
One repeat offender, Fong On Foods Limited, at 46 Kensington Ave., was fined $25,000 this week for cockroach-infestation and food-contamination charges dating back to September, 2008.
Barbara Kwan, vice-chair of the Chinatown BIA, said business owners in the neighbourhood are doing everything they can to combat the problem.
The BIA began a year-long pest-control strategy last May, which includes educating merchants about pest control in their own languages and hiring Orkin PCO Services to eliminate rodents in public spaces, such as back laneways, behind buildings and in garbage storage areas.
But, she said, “the issue is not only restricted to Chinatown. We can only do so much.”
Kensington Market Action Committee chairman Chris Devita agreed but said many local residents and business owners are not doing anything to eliminate pests.
“[Garbage] is one thing Kensington Market fails on continuously. Some store owners don’t seem to understand that you can’t store waste between buildings in the alleyways.”
“There are violators with piles of garbage bags half torn open.”
He attributed the problem to a language barrier: Instructions explaining the new city-issued waste bins were given in English only, so some residents use their bins to store everything from clothes and soil to empty bottles. “It’s not good enough to say, ‘Visit our Web site’ in Chinese or Portuguese, or any other language.”
Mr. Devita’s home on the north end of Augusta Avenue is within blocks of more than a dozen businesses closed for rodent and insect infestations, among other charges, in the past year. He said despite his best efforts to “hermetically seal” his house, it’s a constant battle against neighbours’ rats, mice and cockroaches.
“In order to contain a problem of this magnitude, there needs to be a system-wide address from the city. You have to deal with it everywhere rather than do it piecemeal and close a restaurant here and close a restaurant there.”
Greg Baumann, a senior scientist at the National Pest Management Association, said it’s unfair to demand business-owners be pest-free if the city isn’t doing everything it can to eradicate rodents in streets, sewers, subway tunnels and parks.
Reg Ayre, another manager of healthy environments at Toronto Public Health, said the city has a “low, smouldering infestation” and he thinks what they’re doing is enough. “In comparison to other big cities, Toronto has a very low infestation rate. It certainly isn’t a situation where rats are out of control.”
But Councillor Adam Vaughan (Trinity-Spadina) said that although the city has begun to bait and trap the sewers, it has been slow to address the garbage problem in both neighbourhoods, allowing rodents to thrive.
Until last summer, Kensington Market had no public litter bins, and residents who live above the restaurants and shops on Spadina Avenue recently received city-issued bins to store waste, but Mr. Vaughan said they’re not always collected.
“The city needs to step up with appropriate levels of litter removal. [The city hasn't] been entirely fair in terms of stepping up [public health] enforcement with a lack of provision of essential services.”
Rob Orpin, Solid Waste Management’s director of collections, said the city started a pilot project last summer offering Spadina Avenue businesses bins for their one-night-a-week collection. “We’re trying to eliminate the number of bags on the street.”
However, Mr. Orpin said, part of the problem is that businesses larger than 500 square metres are not eligible for city waste collection; they must hire private contractors and set their own collection schedules.