Since a video of rats scampering around a KFC/Taco Bell the day after a health inspection surfaced last February, rats in restaurants has become a hot topic (and not in the Pixar/Disney sense). Now new numbers show that at least New York's Department of Health has taken the scandal to heart.
The New York Post has crunched the DOH numbers and found that "25.2 percent of the 28,955 eateries inspected in the 2007 fiscal year, which ended June 30, failed their initial exams. A year earlier, the failure rate was 19.9 percent." Just as significant, 48 percent of those cases involved what inspectors called "signs of active rats."
Increased rodent awareness training for inspectors is thought to have contributed to the jump in citations, though the bump in closures hasn't stopped intrepid TV crews from filming the vermin in situ.