Flies and mold on slicers. A condenser dripping on pork. A Miami supermarket’s filth

A Miami supermarket washed cookware without sanitizer, kept food at bacteria-breeding temperatures and had “mold-like growth” and flies on food contact equipment.

Then, there’s the pigs’ feet getting dripped on by a condenser.

That’s just some of what Florida Department of Agriculture inspectors found Friday at Total Supermarket, 5700 NW Second Ave., in Miami’s Edison area near Little Haiti and Liberty City.

Ae&O Supermarket owns the store, which previously operated as Zubi Supermarket. State registration and Broward County Property records say Ae&O is run by Arturo De La Cruz out of a Weston home.

Ag Department inspectors check out sellers of packaged food, from supermarkets down to FedEx locations, as well as retail and wholesale bakeries, food distributors, food processors and food storage facilities. Unlike the Department of Business and Professional Regulation’s inspectors of restaurants, Ag Department inspectors can’t close down an establishment if a place gets the worst inspection rating of “Re-Inspection Required.”

They can, however, slap Stop Sales on food and Stop-Use Orders on equipment and areas. And, Inspectors James Zheng and Margaret Alvarez fired a shower of Stop Sales as well as found Total Supermarket ignored a Stop-Use Order from July 2022.

READ MORE: A Palm Beach Dollar General store’s rodent problem

▪ Meat department employees couldn’t wash their hands in the handwashing sink next to the walk-in freezer — no soap and no paper towels for drying hands.

▪ Also, in the meat department “water from condensing unit leaking onto pigs feet in the reach-in cooler,” That brought a Stop Sale on the soggy pork.

▪ The sanitizer in the meat department’s three-compartment sink — washing, rinsing, sanitizing the commercial cookware — measured zero parts per million. There was no sanitizer or sanitizing.

▪ The meat department’s walk-in freezer plastic curtains had “pink, mold-like growth.”

▪ There was “green and black mold-like growth” on the back wheel and top half of the meat department’s turkey band saw.

▪ In the deli area, “multiple large flies were observed on top of the deli slicer and the meat tenderizer.”

▪ “Heavy dust accumulation” covered the produce area walk-in cooler’s fan guards.

▪ The kitchen area had “old food residue” on pots, pot lids and knives on a storage shelf.

▪ A backroom walk-in cooler used for storing sausage, milk, eggs and yogurt was put under a Stop-Use Order on July 12, 2022 for being in disrepair. It shouldn’t have been in use, but it was being used for these foods, which can ferry foodborne illnesses when they aren’t kept under 41 degrees or (if cooked) over 135 degrees.

Speaking of food being kept at temperatures out of range and being thrown out as unsafe...

▪ Baked chicken (115 to 126 degrees) in kitchen hot storage. In the kitchen reach-in cooler, Caesar salad (62 degrees); sliced tomatoes (66 to 70); shredded lettuce (62 to 64); pasta salad (77 to 78). The produce walk-in cooler had cut watermelon (51 degrees); cut cantaloupe (49); raw smoked sausage (50); and hot dogs (50). At the deli counter, Sliced Muenster cheese measured a near room temperature 74 degrees.

All were thrown out.

▪ Salmon filet (52 degrees), salmon cutlet (48) and tilapia filet (46) in the seafood reach-in cooler also were in the temperature danger zone, but they were allowed to be put under refrigeration for more cooling.

▪ A box of oranges was stored on the floor, under an handwashing sink, leaving them “exposed to splashing.”