Health staff keeps food safe

Every food vendor is inspected at least once by Friday, a health official said.

By WILLIAM K. ALCORN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

CANFIELD — Elephant ears coated in sugar, sausage sandwiches dripping grease and smothered in onions and peppers, milkshakes and lemon shakes and slushies, ribs and burgers sizzling on grills.

Mercy.

A seemingly endless variety of foods and drinks prepared by nearly 250 food and drink vendors are all part and parcel of the Canfield Fair.

“The Canfield Fair is an extraordinary concentration of people and farm animals over a short period of time, creating a potential for public health problems,” said Matthew Stefanak, health commissioner for the Mahoning County District Board of Health.

Working in the background to prevent the kind of food and waterborne outbreaks that have occurred at some other fairs in recent years is the county health department’s staff.

Rick Setty, the health department’s director of environmental health for the county, has assembled 14 sanitarians to work in two-person teams inspecting food vendors.

“We hit it hard [Wednesday], Thursday and Friday, and inspect every operator at least once by Friday,” Setty said.

Special attention

Though all food vendors are inspected, Setty said the sanitarians “zero in on” temporary (not mobile) food operations, such as open grills. Most of the self-contained units are pretty good, he explained.

Setty said the sanitarians go through their reports after the fair and send letters with their findings to the poor operators and the fair board.

“Poor operators are not tolerated. There are too many good operators waiting to get into the fair,” Setty said.

Stefanak said department plumbing inspectors are also involved at the fair making sure that the equipment that keeps water used for animals from contaminating water used for cooking and drinking by humans is working properly.

In recent years there have been outbreaks of food and waterborne disease at fairs. But it has never happened at Canfield because sanitarians and plumbing inspectors do their jobs with the full support of the fair board, Stefanak said.

Setty said Ohio’s new indoor smoking ban will be enforced in buildings and tents and food preparing area, a ban the Canfield Fair Board has enforced for several years. He said the fair board has not outlawed outdoor smoking at the fair, however.

Other health booths

Other county health department staff at the fair include nurses staffing a booth in the Medical Building, where educational materials are available; and the Mahoning County stand Team, sponsored by the health board.

The stand Team is giving away visors and asking youth and adults to write an anti-tobacco-related message on the front of the visor, such as “Stand up,” “Speak out against tobacco,” or “I pledge to never use tobacco,” said Heather Krause, the health board’s community health education specialist.

A stand Team is a group of young people, in one area, who want to take a stand against tobacco and have formed a team to do so, Krause said.

She said team members are manning their booth from 2 to 8 p.m. today through Friday, and have special gear to give to youth ages 12-18 who sign up to become members of stand. Also, they are dispensing information about the Ohio Tobacco Quit Line for adults, and copies of Ohio’s Smoke Free Workplace Act.

alcorn@vindy.com