Health inspectors take a close look at vendors

Inspectors began their rounds Wednesday; only one vendor was cited.
By STEPHEN SIFF
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
BAZETTA -- Food vendors at the Trumbull County fair are not afraid to fry cheese. They don't count carbs. They don't shrink from a sizzling kielbasa.
But vendors might be wise to worry about the diminutive health department inspector with a pocket full of hairnets.
During the six days of the Trumbull County Fair, health department inspectors will visit each of the roughly 50 food vendors several times, poking meat, testing freezers, scolding uncovered heads. Most visits on their Wednesday morning rounds were uneventful. One, to a stand selling meat across a yards-long grill, ended with citations, discarded chicken and threats of further action.
Keeping tabs
"Most of the people are doing pretty good," said Becky Rozzo, one of two county health department inspectors stationed all week at the fairgrounds to monitor food vendors.
"If you don't come by daily, things get out of hand." After a few hours at a county fair, an inspector gets jaded. Looking from the department's golf cart across the midway's four rows of fried food, Rozzo, co-worker Diane Rupert and their supervisor, Frank Migliozzi, noted an uptick in baseball caps and bandanas on food service workers.
"Because they know we are watching them," Migliozzi observed. "They know the health department is here, so they put their hats on."
The vendor that ran afoul of inspectors had a whole range of problems -- uncooked, sliced chicken left in a tub on a countertop, dirty water slopping on the floor, meat stored at unacceptably warm temperatures, no hand-washing station or three-compartment sink.
While Migliozzi warned the middle-aged stand manager that she'd better clean up her act or she'd be closed down, teens wearing rubber gloves turned sausages and fried peppers on the front grill.
A woman in a Cleveland Browns T-shirt walked up.
"Can I have a gyro?" she asked.
Choose wisely
Eating is a big part of the fair experience, and even the health department inspectors can't keep away from their favorite stands. Officials couldn't recall a major outbreak of food-born illness at the Trumbull County Fair.
Still, officials say that fairgoers who use their eyes as well as their stomachs when choosing where to buy lunch can do a pretty good job avoiding intestinal incidents.
Warnings can be uncooked meat left to warm up or cooked meat left to cool down, food service workers not wearing gloves or a generally dingy atmosphere.
"You can tell," Rozzo said. "If you look in them, and they don't have a place too clean, well ..."