Sources and Methodology

Primary sources only

A requirement appears on this site only when it is tied to a primary source: the FDA Food Code as published by FDA, the statute or rule as published by the government that issued it (the U.S. Code, eCFR, the Utah Legislature, the Utah Office of Administrative Rules, a health department's published regulation), the agency's own notice, or the court's own opinion. Summaries by law firms, trade groups, pest control companies, news outlets or other websites are used only to find a primary source, never as the source.

A saved copy of every source

Each source is saved at the time it is read, as a PDF, HTML file or text extraction, in a private archive with its URL and retrieval date. Some sources are copyrighted, which is why the archive is private; the public pages quote only short passages with citations.

Quotations are checked word for word

Every quotation on a page is compared, by script, against the saved copy of its source, allowing only for line breaks and typographic quote marks. A quotation that does not match is fixed or removed before the page is published. Each page shows the date its quotations were last checked.

The inspection analysis

The numbers on the Your Inspection Report pages and in the inspection data dashboard come from the Salt Lake County Health Department's public food-establishment inspection records, which the county publishes for every permitted establishment. The snapshot used on this site was taken on 2026-11-02. Published figures use routine inspections dated 2024-11-02 to 2026-11-02: 8,378 routine inspections of 4,351 establishments. Each violation line was read as the county wrote it (its code, the inspector's observation, the critical flag, whether it was corrected on site, and the county's own "PHR" label) and tagged as pest-related when the observation or label named a pest, a pest product, an insect control device, or an opening or harborage condition.

• Aggregate only. No establishment is named, ranked, mapped or otherwise identified anywhere on this site, in any download, in the machine-readable text file or in structured data. There are no "worst restaurant" lists here and there never will be.
• A publication floor of 10. Any cell with fewer than 10 inspections is suppressed, so that no single restaurant can be picked out of a small group.
• A dated snapshot. The county posts new inspections continually. The figures here are frozen on the snapshot date shown and are refreshed only when the whole analysis is re-run and re-checked.
• Known limits. A small number of lines (fewer than 0.4 percent) carry codes outside the county's food-regulation numbering (for example Utah Indoor Clean Air Act items) and are not read as violation lines; none of them is pest-related. Monthly counts for individual pests are mostly below the publication floor, so the seasonality page makes a claim only where the count clears it.
• What the tags are not. A pest-related tag means the inspector wrote about a pest or a pest-related condition. It is not a judgment that the kitchen was infested, and it is not a judgment about the inspector.

Labels you will see

• Quoted text is the source's own words, with the source and location under it.
• Professional synthesis, not law marks the author's reading of published records. It is not a legal rule.
• Trial-level, unpublished, or not food service labels mark court decisions that do not bind other courts or that arose outside a restaurant.

What this site will not do

• Describe a legal requirement that a primary source does not state.
• Identify any establishment from the inspection records, or describe any operator as a wrongdoer beyond what an official record states.
• Give a verdict or settlement figure without a court record or official release.
• Use statistics that could not be traced to their source and their query.
• Grade, criticize or recommend any pest control company.
• Discuss any matter in which the author has been retained.
• Use fear language, or promise that any record, product or service will make an inspection go a particular way.

Languages

The core pages and every tool are written in English and Spanish. The Spanish is written for a manager who runs a kitchen in Spanish, in the formal usted, and is checked by a separate AI review before it is published; it is not a machine-literal translation. Where a legal text exists only in English, the Spanish page quotes the English and explains it in Spanish.

How it is kept current

Rules that change, such as Utah's pesticide rule and the county regulations, are re-checked at each review. When a page is re-verified, its date changes; a page is not re-dated without a real check. Corrections from readers are checked against the primary source before a page changes.

Open items

Things this research looked for and could not verify, or that are not yet settled. Each stays off the site, or is stated as open, until it is verified.

Not legal advice

This reference is general information about published law, guidance, public records and court decisions. It is not legal advice and does not create any professional relationship. Verify any citation against its primary source before relying on it, and ask counsel about your own situation.