A dishwasher wasn't heating water at the sanitizing temperature of 160 degrees. Pizza was held under lamps at temperatures of 106 and 118 degrees - not the required 140 degrees or higher needed to keep it safe from microbes, and therefore safe to eat.

"A personal drink is stored on the prep table and next to food. The can opener is dirty," the inspector wrote, marking off two more critical out-of-compliance violations.

The inspection ended with two terse notes. One promised a follow-up inspection of the dishwasher. The other assessed a follow-up inspection fee of $100.

Taylorsville High's kitchen isn't alone among schools cited for violations county health departments consider "critical" factors in serving safe, sanitary food to students.

And the reason such critical violations matter: volume.

Few restaurants open to the public serve as many meals to as many people as one school cafeteria. "If a restaurant screws up, they make a family sick. If a school kitchen screws up, they can make hundreds sick," said Delane McGarvey, director of environmental health services division for Davis County Environmental Health Department.

Violations widespread: An examination of food safety inspection reports by The Salt Lake Tribune showed that 25 percent of school kitchens in the Granite School District, which includes Taylorsville High, garnered one or more such critical violations from Aug. 1, 2007 to Aug. 1, 2008.

Compared with inspection reports from other Utah school districts of notable and comparable size during the same time period, Granite fares well. In the Jordan School District, 45 percent of school kitchens were in violation of one or more of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department's eight areas of critical compliance. And 54 percent of school kitchens in the Salt Lake City School District were in violation of one or more critical areas.

Although health departments in Davis and Utah counties use slightly different language in their inspection reports, 33 percent of Davis County School District kitchens and 72 percent of Alpine kitchens were found to be out of compliance.

McGarvey estimates that school kitchens in the Davis School District serve approximately 33,000 meals to students every day, which is still smaller than the number of people who eat out in restaurants within Davis County boundaries. Volume isn't all that matters, however. Health experts say that children, along with the aged, are more susceptible to food-borne illnesses.

What inspectors look for: Everything that matters in most kitchens - hand-washing, food temperatures and cross-contamination - matters to the food inspectors as well. Some violations, though, such as dented cans or porous cutting surfaces, may puzzle those unfamiliar with the finer points of food safety. To the trained food inspector, they still matter.

A dented can may be punctured, leaving low-acidic foods such as green beans vulnerable to botulism. Cutting surfaces and storage shelves must be nonporous, or bacteria will find a breeding ground. During the same inspection timeline, the number of schools with a critical violation in one or more areas including hygienic practices, protection from contamination, or a potentially hazardous food holding time or temperature ranged from 17 percent in Alpine district to 54 percent in Salt Lake City School District.

Inspections vary by county: Inspection frequency and violation descriptions vary across county health departments charged with making sure schools adhere to the Food and Drug Administration's 2005 model food code, making exact comparisons of school kitchen performance by district difficult. Given budget restraints, Davis County Environmental Health Department inspects its schools once per year, as opposed to the recommended twice-per-year schedule other county health departments follow.

Food protection supervisors and food safety inspectors such as Dezi Hemingway, who inspects Salt Lake City School District kitchens, say school cafeterias earn marks above restaurants open to the public. "I always try to talk the school lunch ladies I inspect into holding classes for restaurants," Hemingway said. "The schools I inspect are pretty darned good compared to a lot of restaurants in Salt Lake City."

Restaurants vs. schools: Restaurants and school cafeterias are held to identical standards, but comparisons are tricky. The number of annual inspections of public restaurants in county health departments in Utah depends on individual risk factors, leaving some restaurants with only one inspection per year while others are subjected to four. Some restaurants serve up to three meals per day, requiring them to maintain or "hold" foods at required temperatures for much longer than cafeterias, which serve mostly lunch. Unlike school cafeterias, which serve mostly all the food they prepare, restaurants store and reheat far larger portions. School cafeterias traditionally serve only one meat or fish dish per day, cutting down on chances of cross-contamination, as opposed to restaurants serving numerous menu items.

All this leaves the margin of error for most restaurants wider than for school kitchens, prompting the question of whether the lower average number of yearly violations for cited school kitchens in Salt Lake County renders comparing the two somewhat deceptive. "They're two different animals," McGarvey said. "They're not directly comparable, but the schools do an excellent job of providing safe, healthy food."

Taylorsville responds: Cindy Moser, cafeteria manager for Taylorsville High School, said that while she was disappointed in her kitchen's April inspection report, she wasted no time in fixing the dishwasher's water temperature and ramping up lamp temperatures for serving pizza. The too-cold heat lamps, she said, were unfortunately installed the day inspectors showed up and had not been fully adjusted.

"Some of it's out of your control," Moser said. "Nobody liked to feel like they didn't pass. I take pride in my kitchen. I never get worried when they [inspectors] come because I really want to know if things aren't well. But I also get a little nervous because I don't want to look bad. I want everything clean."

More than six months past Taylorsville High's last inspection, though, no food safety inspector has visited Moser's kitchen for a follow-up. "When they didn't come back I was like, 'Oh, brother. I guess it wasn't that bad,' " Moser said.

That lack of follow-up was "an honest mistake," but with reason, said Bryce Larsen, director of food protection for Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

"Not all critical violations are created equal," Larsen said. In the case of Taylorsville, inspectors learned the dishwasher had a manual backup process for times when the washer's automatic system failed to bring water to the correct temperature. The absence of backup processes is a red light for inspectors, while in-place systems are an assurance that the situation likely won't become critical.

In his more than 30 years working for Davis County, McGarvey said there have been no food-borne illness outbreaks traced back to Davis School District kitchens. Food safety inspection officers with Salt Lake County can't recall one, either.

The fact that tracing the source of food-borne illnesses remains notoriously difficult, though, requires constant vigilance.

Given extra funds, county health departments in Utah say, they would gladly hire more food safety inspectors or inspect more frequently.

The FDA's recommended ratio of licensed food inspectors to restaurants and other establishments serving food is one per 150. Utah's most current ratio for 2007, according to the State Health Department, is one licensed food inspector per 231.

"It's one of those balancing acts," Larsen said. "We think of all we could do given more money, but we always end up prioritizing."