MASCOTTE, FL. Back in April 2026, state inspectors walked into Mi Tierra Mexican Food Inc. on East Myers Boulevard and found that employees were not required to report symptoms of illness to management, and that no written employee health policy existed to require them to do so.
That combination, two separate high-severity violations cited on the same inspection, means that a food worker with Norovirus, Salmonella, or Hepatitis A could have been handling food that day with no system in place to stop them.
The restaurant was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The April 16 inspection produced six high-severity violations and two intermediate ones. Beyond the illness-reporting failures, inspectors cited improper handwashing technique, meaning that even when employees did wash their hands, they were not doing it correctly enough to remove pathogens.
Food contact surfaces, the cutting boards, prep tables, and utensils that touch the food customers eat, were not being properly cleaned or sanitized. Toxic chemicals were improperly stored or labeled near food areas, creating a direct contamination path.
The restaurant also lacked a consumer advisory for raw or undercooked menu items. That notice exists specifically to warn pregnant women, elderly diners, young children, and anyone with a compromised immune system that certain dishes carry elevated risk. Without it, those customers had no way to make an informed choice.
Inspectors also found that single-use items were being reused and that toilet facilities were inadequate or improperly maintained.
What These Violations Mean
The pairing of no employee health policy and no illness-reporting requirement is particularly serious. These are not paperwork violations. They are the structural conditions under which foodborne illness outbreaks begin. The Centers for Disease Control has identified infected food workers as the leading cause of Norovirus outbreaks in restaurant settings, and Norovirus spreads with extreme efficiency, a sick employee touching a prep surface can infect dozens of customers from a single shift.
Improper handwashing technique compounds that risk directly. Studies show that a majority of people who believe they are washing their hands correctly are leaving detectable pathogens on their skin. At Mi Tierra, inspectors flagged both the absence of a reporting system and the failure of the physical act meant to interrupt transmission.
Improperly cleaned food contact surfaces are a separate contamination pathway. Raw meat proteins left on a cutting board that is then used for vegetables, or a prep surface that carries residue from a prior meal service, can transfer bacteria including E. coli and Listeria without any visible sign that anything is wrong.
The chemical storage violation adds a third risk category entirely. Cleaning agents and pesticides stored near or above food preparation areas can contaminate food directly, and mislabeled containers have historically been the cause of acute poisoning incidents in restaurant kitchens.
The Longer Record
The April 2026 inspection was not an anomaly. State records show Mi Tierra Mexican Food has been inspected 27 times and has accumulated 221 total violations across that history. The restaurant has never been emergency-closed.
The pattern of high-severity violations is consistent and long-running. In December 2024, inspectors cited seven high-severity and three intermediate violations. In March 2024, the count was six high-severity and four intermediate. In October 2025, four high-severity violations were documented. In April 2025, five high-severity and two intermediate violations appeared, almost exactly one year before the April 2026 inspection produced six high-severity and two intermediate.
That April-to-April comparison is worth sitting with. The violation count went up, not down, over twelve months.
Going back further, inspectors visited the restaurant three times in a two-month window in the spring of 2023, in May, early June, and again in early June, logging a combined 19 high-severity violations across those three visits alone. The restaurant remained open through all of it.
Still Open
State inspectors left Mi Tierra Mexican Food on April 16 without posting an emergency closure order. The six high-severity violations, including the absence of any system to keep sick workers out of the kitchen, were documented in the record and the restaurant continued serving customers.
In 27 inspections, the facility has never been ordered to close.