North Valley Nursing Center: Food Safety Failures - CA
The staff member present called it dust. Then, six hours later, a maintenance supervisor watched as another wipe of the same machine — this time across the bin, the door molding, and the door itself — pulled up light brown and black residue. He said the same thing: dust. He also said the machine should be kept clean to prevent infections in residents.
The ice machine had last been cleaned on April 24. That was 24 days before inspectors arrived.
Eighty-four of the facility's 87 residents receive water and drinks from the facility. All 84 were identified as potentially at risk from what inspectors found that week.
The ice machine was one problem. The drinks being served to those residents at lunch were another.
On May 20, 2026, just before 12:30 p.m., an inspector stood in the kitchen with the facility's registered dietitian and tested the temperatures of drinks already loaded onto lunch trays. Whole milk pulled from the first tray measured 64 degrees Fahrenheit. The second tray's cup came in at 50.5 degrees. The third at 43 degrees. A cup of apple juice measured 56.8 degrees. Orange juice came in at 62.4 degrees.
The safe threshold is 41 degrees. Milk at 64 degrees is nearly 25 degrees above it.
The registered dietitian, standing there as the thermometer readings came in, said drinks served to residents need to be lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit and served within two hours if the temperature climbs into what food safety guidelines call the danger zone, the range between 41 and 135 degrees where bacteria multiply and toxins can form. She said residents can get foodborne illness if drinks are not kept within safe temperature levels.
Thirty minutes later, the kitchen supervisor explained how the drinks ended up that warm. Cups are pre-filled at 6:00 in the morning. They stay refrigerated until 10:00 a.m. Then they go into a freezer until 11:30, when tray line preparation begins. During tray line, kitchen staff are supposed to keep drinks in ice trays, check temperatures, and log the readings on a Food Temperature Chart.
The kitchen supervisor said the drinks had stayed out too long. They were not maintained under 41 degrees.
The gap between 6:00 a.m. and the moment an inspector's thermometer read 64 degrees on a cup of whole milk is at least six and a half hours. The drinks had been in motion through a refrigerator, a freezer, an assembly line, and a tray cart, and somewhere in that chain, the system failed to catch what the thermometer eventually caught.
The registered dietitian reviewed the facility's own food safety policy during the inspection. It states that food must be maintained at proper temperature and kept out of the danger zone. She confirmed the lunch drinks were not maintained out of the danger zone.
What makes the temperature findings harder to dismiss is their range. If one cup of milk had registered slightly warm, it might suggest a single tray sat too long near a heat vent, or a cup was filled last and tested first. But the readings spread across multiple drinks, multiple trays, multiple types of beverages. Milk at 64, juice at 62, apple juice at 56, a second milk at 50.5. The pattern suggests the problem was not one cup. It was the process.
The ice machine log tells a similar story about process. The facility's own cleaning policy, revised as recently as August 2025, calls for specific attention to the door molding and lid, noting the need to check for rust or calcium deposits. The maintenance supervisor knew the machine needed to be kept clean. The cleaning schedule showed it had been done less than a month before. And yet two separate wipe-downs on the same day, hours apart, by two different staff members, each produced visible residue on a clean paper towel.
Neither staff member disputed what the towel showed. Both acknowledged the implications. The maintenance supervisor said the machine should be kept clean to prevent infections. The registered dietitian said residents can get foodborne illness from drinks held at unsafe temperatures. The kitchen supervisor said the drinks stayed out too long.
The acknowledgments were consistent. The conditions that produced them apparently were not new.
Inspectors classified both violations at the level of minimal harm or potential for actual harm, meaning no resident was documented as having become ill from contaminated ice or warm juice during the inspection window. The potential for foodborne illness, the kind that can be difficult to trace back to a single cup of milk or a scoop of ice from a machine that hadn't been wiped down in three weeks, was the basis for the finding.
Eighty-four residents were eating and drinking in that facility every day. Their milk was being poured into cups before sunrise. By lunchtime, it was 64 degrees.
Full Inspection Report
The details above represent a summary of key findings. View the complete inspection report for North Valley Nursing Center from 2026-05-22 including all violations, facility responses, and corrective action plans.
Additional Resources
Data source: This article is based on inspection data downloaded directly from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) via Medicare.gov. CMS releases inspection reports in bulk; we publish the findings as documented by state surveyors in the official Form CMS-2567 Statement of Deficiencies.
Plan of correction: The CMS report we receive does not include the facility's plan of correction. Facilities submit plans of correction separately to state survey agencies and those responses may not be reflected in CMS data at the time of publication. The absence of a plan of correction in our data does not mean one was not filed. Readers who want information about corrective steps taken are encouraged to contact the facility directly or their state survey agency.
Corrections may have occurred: Inspection reports reflect conditions observed on the date of the survey. Facilities may have implemented corrections, staffing changes, additional training, or other remediation since the report was issued. We report what CMS provides and encourage readers to seek current information from the facility.
Editorial process: Inspection findings are extracted from CMS source documents and synthesized using AI, reviewed for factual accuracy against the original report by our editorial team.
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Professional review: All content reviewed by Christopher F. Nesbitt, Sr., NH EMT & BU-trained Paralegal.
Last verified: October 31, 2026 · Our methodology
NORTH VALLEY NURSING CENTER in TUJUNGA, CA was cited for violations during a health inspection on May 22, 2026.
The staff member present called it dust.
Health inspections identify deficiencies that facilities must correct. Violations range from minor documentation issues to serious safety concerns. Review the full report below for specific details and facility response.