North Carolina food safety inspectors will use an improved scale to grade restaurants beginning Tuesday, the state division of environmental health said.

Larry Michael, head of the state's food protection branch, said the new restaurant inspection forms will emphasize the 18 "critical risk factors" that are most likely to make people sick.

Thirty additional "good retail practices" criteria will remain an important part of the inspection process, Michael said, but they will not bring penalties as high as those for violations that place consumers' health in danger.

Critical risk factors include improper cooking or storage of potentially dangerous foods, food handlers who don't wash their hands properly and sick workers preparing food.

North Carolina restaurants are graded on a 100-point scale, with each violation reducing the restaurant's score. Come Tuesday, penalties will increase for some violations. Inspectors also will place more emphasis on correcting violations immediately.

Michael likened the shift to "caring more about hand-washing and cooking foods at the proper temperature and less about cleanliness of the floors."

Michael also noted the revised form brings North Carolina in line with other states' guidelines.

"We thought it was important to pattern our inspection forms with the standards that were developed nationally," he said. "That conveys better information to the public and adds consistency to our inspections."

The new form will allow the public to learn more about the types of violations, when they were corrected and whether violations were a repeat offense, Bart Campbell, chief of the state's environmental health section, said in a release.

"This new form will be a wonderful mechanism for tracking factors contributing to food-borne illnesses in North Carolina," Campbell said.

Get $150+ in coupons in every Sunday N&O. Click here for convenient home delivery.