OCALA, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors visiting Hacienda Colombiana 2 on NE Jacksonville Road found that the restaurant had no written employee health policy, no system for workers to report illness symptoms, and had not followed parasite destruction procedures, all on the same day, all at a facility that remained open for business.
The April 9 inspection produced 8 high-severity violations and 3 intermediate violations. The state did not order an emergency closure.
What Inspectors Found
The parasite destruction failure is the most direct food-safety threat in the April 9 record. When fish, pork, or wild game is served without verified freezing or cooking to kill parasites, customers can ingest live Anisakis larvae or Trichinella without any visible sign the food is unsafe. There is no way for a diner to detect that risk at the table.
The handwashing picture was compounded by two separate violations. Inspectors cited both inadequate handwashing facilities and improper hand and arm washing technique, meaning the infrastructure for basic hygiene was insufficient and the technique used at whatever facilities existed was also wrong.
Toxic chemicals were found improperly stored or labeled. That violation, alongside improperly sanitized food contact surfaces and the reuse of single-use items, adds up to a kitchen where multiple contamination pathways were active at the same time.
Inspectors also documented improper sewage or wastewater disposal, an intermediate violation that carries its own direct contamination risk throughout the facility.
What These Violations Mean
The combination of no employee health policy and employees not reporting illness symptoms is what epidemiologists call an outbreak enabler. Norovirus, which causes roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, spreads most efficiently when sick food workers handle food without any system requiring them to stay home or report symptoms to a manager. A written health policy is the first line of defense. Hacienda Colombiana 2 did not have one on April 9.
The absence of a person in charge actively performing duties connects directly to that failure. CDC data links establishments without active managerial control to three times as many critical violations as those with engaged management. When no one is responsible for enforcing hygiene standards in real time, violations in multiple categories tend to appear together, which is exactly what the April 9 inspection showed.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces allow bacterial transfer between raw and ready-to-eat foods. Cutting boards, prep tables, and utensil surfaces that are not properly sanitized between uses become vehicles for pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli. Combined with multi-use utensils that were also cited as improperly cleaned, the April 9 record describes a kitchen where cross-contamination was structurally likely.
The sewage violation is not a paperwork issue. Improper wastewater disposal creates conditions for fecal contamination to reach food preparation areas, a risk that sits at the extreme end of the public health spectrum.
The Longer Record
The April 9 inspection was not an outlier. The facility's history across 16 inspections on record shows a recurring pattern of serious violations followed by clean re-inspections, then serious violations again.
In September 2024, inspectors found 12 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations, the highest single-visit total in the facility's record. A follow-up inspection two days later showed zero high or intermediate violations. The same reset happened in November 2025, when a November 4 inspection produced 9 high-severity and 3 intermediate violations, and a November 6 re-inspection showed zero. The April 9, 2026 inspection, with its 8 high-severity violations, fits that same cycle. A follow-up on April 14 again showed zero violations.
Across 16 inspections, the facility has accumulated 138 total violations on record. It has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern is consistent enough to name. Serious violations appear. A re-inspection clears them. Months pass. Serious violations appear again. The April 2026 visit was the fourth inspection in the record to produce five or more high-severity violations.
Open for Business
The April 14 re-inspection confirmed the restaurant had addressed the violations found five days earlier. That is the regulatory outcome the system produced.
What the record also shows is that on April 9, 2026, customers ate at a restaurant where parasite destruction procedures had not been followed, where no written policy required sick workers to report their symptoms, and where the person responsible for enforcing food safety was either absent or not doing the job. The facility was not closed that day.