Our decision to embark on a series of articles on food safety particularly as it relates to street vending derived from informal discussions with a handful of readers, insights secured from the usually helpful Director of the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department (GAFDD) Mr Marlan Cole and what one might call street observations by writers.
What we gleaned from the various levels of interface is that food vendors are a growing breed of diligent entrepreneurs whose chosen option is driven primarily by what one might call force of circumstances and that there are instances (too many of them, in our view) where concerns over food safety are preceded by the preoccupation with ‘making a dollar.’
The real problem, of course, has to do with a deficiency which has traditionally bedeviled other areas of public life, that is, the inability – and in some cases, seeming unwillingness – of the so-called enforcement agencies to do their job properly.
The combination of the preoccupation of roadside food vendors with ‘ketchin deh hand’ and the looseness of the oversight mechanisms, when combined with what, unquestionably, is a consistently high demand for street-vended food, is a worrying combination that cannot be separated from the potential health risks that attend these circumstances. Setting aside the valuable briefing on the regulations afforded us by Mr Cole during the Food Handlers Forum hosted by the GAFDD some weeks ago (the level of attendance by businesses involved in the food service sector was worryingly low) we were able to engage a handful of vendors (whose dispositions to openness can, at best, be described as guarded) and some members of the public. It is from these sources that we drew many of our conclusions regarding the state of the street-vended food business.
What both the municipal authorities and the state agencies concerned have manifestly failed to do is to plan, execute and sustain a public education initiative on food safety linked to among other things, street-vended foods. Our limited research of street-vended foods in other countries tells us that it is, in some instances, a controlled, closely monitored and efficiently overseen business and that it is, again in some instances, highly profitable, not only because of the levels of local consumption but also because in those countries street-vended foods are popular with tourists.
It is, of course, entirely understandable that if street-vended food has become a tourist attraction – so to speak – in some countries, then the authorities have every reason to provide the sector with efficient oversight. It raises the question, of course, as to whether, given the sustained policy pronouncements about the potential of Guyana’s tourist industry, there is not a need for far greater official circumspection as far as the behaviour of food vendors is concerned, particularly in relation to monitoring the adherence of those vendors to the various regulations associated with food vending.
In this regard what we found to be part of the problem is the difficulty encountered by officialdom when it comes to accessing information that has to do with the regulations and adherence by the vendors thereto. Frankly, and with the exception of the GAFDD, we found that (and this applies particularly to the municipality) there is an amazing reluctance to provide information on even the most mundane issues relating to food vending on the streets and once we approached the municipality’s food hygiene functionaries with a request for answers to questions relating to issues like regulations, monitoring and oversight we were handed ‘the whole nine yards’ about the need to engage the Town Clerk and City Hall’s Public Relations Officer in order to clear such a request.
Frankly, we drew the conclusion that the main reason for the bureaucratic fences that are erected has to do with a lack of official confidence in the effectiveness of their operations and a concern that scrupulous probing might expose their many areas of weakness. It is a problem which, we believe, extends to the GAFDD even though it has to be said that that department at least demonstrates a willingness to talk about the problem.
We have no statistics on the size of the industry though we have been told, unofficially, that demand for street-vended food continues to attract more vendors to the trade. The worry here is that many of them appear to sneak in under a radar that is characterized by inattention and a lack of enforcement of the regulations. Our findings – based, we repeat, on a strictly limited though, we believe, valid inquiry – are that the present official posture to the rigorous application of the food safety laws is proceeding in a manner which, arguably, may amount to a public health risk. That has to change.
