By Marilyn Collins
Street-vended food is ubiquitous in every country, popular with local consumers and even attractive to tourists, Guyana is no different to anywhere else in this regard.
Often, street food is a convenient source of nutritious and cheap food. Food vending also serves as a source of income for large numbers of Guyanese families. Street-vended food, however, can pose health risks if only because of the uncertainty that is often associated with health considerations including methods of preparation and storage.
Often, street-vended foods are fully or partially prepared on the streets. Some are fully prepared at home then taken onto the streets for sale. Both methods of preparation and point of sale operation come with a range of food safety risks. The purchaser cannot judge by the appearance of the vendor the possible health hazards associated with street-vended foods.
Street vendors’ offerings, include, for example, coconut water and cane juice. School vendors’ mobile glass cases contain an assortment of barbecues, fried foods and foods that are often made primarily by hand. Many vendors are nomadic in their operations and surface suddenly and in considerable numbers, posing a burden to the regulatory authorities already challenged by limited human and material resources.
What strategies can be employed by the food control authorities (given their limited resources) to seek to ensure the safety of street food?
A visit to the barbecue sites at the Georgetown seawall has persuaded this writer that there is an urgent need to address food safety issues in order to minimize the risks associated with street-vended foods. Casual observation of the food preparation ‘culture’ amongst the vendors often reveals a lack of understanding of the basic tenets of food hygiene, in addition to a lack of environmental and allergen control.
Some of the violations/transgressions gleaned from observing these vendors at work include the use of spatulas, forks and tongs for the handling of both raw and ready-to-eat meat. This key violation can result in the cross-contamination of foods through the transfer of pathogenic microorganisms to ready-to-eat foods. Distinctions of size and color should be employed to distinguish between tools used in the handling of raw and cooked foods. It should be stated that cross-contamination of foods, through this method, is a well-documented cause of outbreaks of food borne diseases that affect raw meats and other ready-to-eat foods such as salads.
Two points should be made at this juncture. The first is that insistence of food safety standards in the public vending of foods ought not to be seen as a means of seeking to negatively affect this sector upon which large numbers of people depend for a living. The salient point is, however, that vendors who offer food for public consumption have a particularly important responsibility to abide by national food safety regulations. By the same token the authorities have a responsibility to ensure that those regulations are scrupulously enforced.
The second point to be made is that street food has become an integral part of the global entertainment culture in many countries including Guyana and its survival and growth in other countries has, in large measure, been a function of strict policing systems. That is an issue that the authorities here ought to consider.
To return to the seawall episode: It was disturbing that when a customer pointed out the food safety risk linked to the misuse of tools that customer was met with verbal aggression from the vendor. It is only through a process of education that those types of shortcomings can be corrected.
Temperature control is yet another important issue in the area of food safety. Cooking in itself is not a sterilization process. There is the possibility that harmful organisms can survive the coking process if hygiene and recontamination conditions are not observed. One of the critical factors in this regard is the cooking of foods above 70 degrees Celsius and serving it piping hot. Vendors, for the most part, have no temperature control mechanisms to keep food above 60 degrees or below 40 degrees. Cooked foods should not remain at ambient temperatures for more than two hours and therefore should not be prepared long in advance of consumption. Storage of cooked foods in Styrofoam boxes and glass cases for extended periods could mimic the conditions of an incubator and allow for the multiplication of bacteria (germs) in infective doses. Salads and their ingredients should be kept iced until served. All mechanisms should be in place to prevent contamination, survival and regrowth of organisms.
As one observes vendors plying their trade it is often noted that a single piece of cloth is used to wipe tools and surfaces used in the preparation of raw and ready to eat foods. There is no evidence of a sanitizing solution – that should be regularly replenished – in this process. This is a major source of contamination.
Vendors frequently display a complete lack of knowledge on how to handle common allergens and are largely unaware of the consequences of consumer susceptibility to food allergens such as eggs, seafood and crustaceans and nuts – to name a few. All too frequently, the same storage and preparation surfaces are used for different types of foods without the necessary washing and sanitizing.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the hygiene principles associated with food safety. The best strategy for reducing the incidence of food- borne illnesses is providing effective education of food handlers and in the basic tenets of food hygiene; this will result in unlearning and re-learning behavioral habits that could minimize and or eliminate food safety difficulties. While there may be excuses associated with limited manpower to execute education programmes, a standardized and harmonized curriculum could be developed among food safety regulators and an integrated programme implemented by a recognized and competent unit.
Food control regulators need to discontinue the granting of vending approval to food vendors based solely on medical examinations. Criteria should include food hygiene training, coupled with monitoring sessions to ensure that the hygiene-related principles are put into practice. The issuance of approval to vendors based solely on medical examination can give rise to unacceptable risks since many food safety issues such as cross- contamination, inadequate cooking and reheating, improper storage temperature, use of unsafe and unwholesome raw material bear no relation to the physical health of the vendors, but are inextricably linked to levels of hygiene knowledge.
