Your Inspection Report

How to Read the Pest Lines on a Salt Lake County Inspection Report

Written for: Restaurant owners and managers who just read their own report; new managers; Spanish-first kitchens (see the Spanish page)

Parts of this page marked Professional synthesis, not law are a Board Certified Entomologist's reading of published records. They are not legal rules, they are not legal advice, and they are written to read the same for an owner, a customer, or either side's counsel.

A Salt Lake County inspection report is a table. Each row is one thing the inspector observed, with a code, a few words, some marks and a label. The pest rows are usually a small part of the report, and they are the rows this page is about. If you want the meaning of one specific row, the Decoder does that; this page explains the report itself.

The columns

A row on the county’s public report has these parts, left to right:

• Code. A number like 4.6.15. It is the section of the county’s own food regulation, Health Regulation #5, which follows the FDA Food Code. The Decoder maps every pest code to the rule and to the Food Code section behind it.
• Observation. The inspector’s own words, in the style of these made-up examples: “Gap under the back door,” “Dead cockroaches under the three-compartment sink,” “Can of Raid on the shelf above the prep table.” This is the most useful sentence on the report. It tells you what was seen and where.
• Points. Each line carries 1, 3 or 6 points (see “The score” below). The public report shows the total.
• Critical. Yes or No. See “The asterisks” below.
• Occurrences. How many times the same item was observed on that visit.
• COS. Corrected on site: the inspector saw it fixed before leaving. A can of spray carried out to the dumpster during the inspection is a COS. A door gap is almost never a COS, because it takes a part and a tool.
• PHR. The county’s label for the rule, such as “Outer Openings-Protected” or “Controlling Pests.” These labels are the names used throughout this site.

The score, in the county’s words

The county explains its scoring on its own site:

Violations observed during an inspection each carry a score of 1, 3, or 6 points depending on the severity of the violation (i.e., how likely the violation is to cause illness). The point total accumulated during an inspection is the inspection “score,” so—like golf—the lower the score, the better. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Inspection Reports page, read Nov. 3, 2026

So a score is not a grade out of 100. It is a total of points for one visit, and zero is the best possible score. On the public site, each row’s points are set by the county’s risk ranking of the violation:

Violation points may be 1, 3, or 6 points. The points used to calculate an establishment’s score are as follows: Highest Risk Violations 6 points Moderate Risk Violations 3 points Lowest Risk Violations 1 point Swing violation points are determined by the inspector based on the risk to the public and receive 1, 3, or 6 points. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Scoring Method / Ranking Method

The rank

The rank is a percentile, not a score. It compares your most recent score with every other establishment in your risk level:

Food service establishment rankings are a comparison of an individual establishment’s inspection score against all other establishments within their same risk level category. So, for example, a sushi restaurant will not be compared to a convenience store. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Inspection Reports page, read Nov. 3, 2026

The ranking is expressed as a percentile from 0% to 100%, so a restaurant with a ranking of 25% means that restaurant scores better than 25% of establishments within its same risk level category. Because we add new inspections every business day, an establishment’s ranking can change between its inspections because the scores of other establishments within the same category will affect its ranking. Rankings are recalculated weekly, on Friday evenings, to include that week’s new inspections. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Inspection Reports page, read Nov. 3, 2026

Two things follow. Your rank can move without a new inspection of your restaurant, because everyone else’s inspections move the comparison. And a higher rank is better.

The asterisks and the word “critical”

On the report and in the regulation, critical items are marked:

Critical violations may pose an immediate risk to public health. They are identified in the Health Regulation and on the inspection report with an asterisk (*) at the end of the violation heading. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Scoring Method / Ranking Method

Noncritical violations are violations that if not corrected may lead to problems in an establishment over time. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Scoring Method / Ranking Method

Regulation #5 defines two classes of critical item, “Critical 1 Item (Priority Item)” and “Critical 2 Item (Priority Foundation Item),” marked in the regulation with Roman numerals I and II; the county’s public pages do not say in so many words what one asterisk versus two means on a report. What this site can say from the data is which pest lines are critical in practice: “Controlling Pests” lines (a pest the inspector saw) and the poisonous-or-toxic-materials lines (a pesticide the inspector found) are critical on nearly every report that carries them, while “Outer Openings,” “Removing Dead or Trapped” and “Insect Control Devices” lines almost never are (what inspectors cite).

Some items are swing items:

Some violations are considered swing violations. These violations allow the inspector to decide, based on the situation, whether the violation is critical or noncritical. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Scoring Method / Ranking Method

“Controlling Pests” appears on reports in both a critical and a non-critical form, which is consistent with that.

Inspection types, follow-ups and the fee

A Routine Inspection is an inspection done at regular intervals throughout the year. These inspections are typically unannounced and are completed 1 to 4 times per year depending on the establishment’s risk level (based on the complexity of food types, processes and meal volume). — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Inspection types

A Follow-up Inspection is an inspection done at an establishment where the inspector has identified a number of critical or many on-going non-critical violations, or a combination of both. A $100 fee is charged to a food establishment for a follow-up inspection. — Salt Lake County Health Department, Public Health Inspections site, Inspection types

Regulation #5 states the follow-up fee as one the Director sets in the Department’s fee schedule; the $100 figure is the one the county’s inspection site states. On frequency, the regulation itself says the Department may inspect at least once every six months, while the county’s web pages give the risk-level schedule above (once a year to three or four times a year). Both are quoted on the county regulation page; this site does not pick between them.

What is public

Everything above is published by the county for every permitted establishment, with a history back to 2008. How that record reaches customers, and what to do about it, is on How inspection results become public in Utah.

Turning a pest line into a work order

Professional synthesis, not law. The report is written for the inspector’s purposes. To use it, rewrite each pest row as a job:

1. Where. Copy the location from the observation (“under the three-compartment sink,” “back door to the alley”).
2. What was seen. The organism or the condition, in the inspector’s words.
3. Which rule. The code and the PHR label; the Decoder gives you the Food Code section and FDA’s reason in one click.
4. Who fixes it. Staff (remove the spray can, take down the fly strip, pull the dead insects and wipe the area, stop propping the door), maintenance (door sweep, closer, screen, sealant, pipe escutcheons), or your pest company (treatment, stations, monitoring, identification).
5. What proves it. A dated line in the corrective-action log, a photo, a receipt, a service report.

Do all five for every pest row, before the follow-up. Seven in ten kitchens clear the pest line by the next visit; the five steps are how.