Food inspections a huge undertaking

Alberta Health Services

(AHS) would like to address concerns raised in a recent article about food inspections at Edmonton Heritage Festival.

Like many Edmontonians, we love to get out and take in all that this festival does to promote community and multiculturalism. It’s also our job to make sure that every pavilion is operating safely so the food people are serving won’t make anyone sick. Given there are 76 pavilions, you can imagine it’s a huge undertaking for our staff.

AHS public health inspectors first met with organizers in March to start scheduling inspector shifts for the long weekend. Our staff relies on vendors submitting their temporary food vendor forms on time so that we can review food safety requirements and schedule inspections.

If a vendor is late or makes changes to their pavilion setup after the fact, it can affect the timing of our inspections.

In May, our inspectors met with pavilion volunteers at their annual general meeting and vendors had a chance to sign up for their inspection time. We also offered two food-safety courses.

We started scheduled inspections Aug. 2 and continued outstanding inspections the morning of Aug. 3 on a first-come, first-serve basis. If an issue is noted, the vendor is required to fix the problem before receiving final sign-off. In the meantime, inspectors will move on to the next pavilion so they can assist other vendors. In some cases, this might result in a slight delay while waiting for the next available inspector to return and sign off on any changes.

We want everyone to enjoy all the summer events that Edmonton has to offer and our Environmental Public Health staff members work long, hard hours behind the scenes to make sure they’re doing their part to keep everyone safe. Dr. Chris Sikora, Edmonton zone medical officer of health, Alberta Health Services