The first thing a state food service inspector does when performing an inspection seems fairly mundane — they wash their hands.

But this step actually offers an easy glimpse at what New Mexico Environmental Health Bureau staff manager James Rivera calls the most important piece of equipment in a restaurant or other food service establishment: the hand-wash station.

“It’s not the refrigerator; it’s not the grill; it’s not the cash register,” Rivera said one day last week as he walked a New Mexican reporter through the motions of a mock inspection in the kitchen at the New Mexico School for the Deaf. “It is the hand-wash station.”

Rivera’s demonstration — which comes as The New Mexican begins publishing reports of the state’s inspections of local restaurants, food trucks, grocery stor

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