As the number of festivities held before the late July to early August Carnival season continues to rise every year, Acting Chief Health Inspector, Daryl Spencer, told Observer recently that food inspections by the Central Board of Health (CBH) may have to occur for these events.
“Antigua is becoming a feting nation, we do have quite a number of fetes…[and] we may have to expand our inspection to the pre-Carnival fetes,” he said.
To facilitate this, the body plans to hold discussions with fete promoters in order to guarantee that food served at the events are done so in a safe manner. This is in an effort to reduce occurrences of food-borne illnesses transmitted to patrons.
Meanwhile, Spencer expressed that the strategy used to ensure that Carnival food vendors who violated food handling regulations were stopped was a success.
“The pre-inspection…where we do a rapid walk-through, and we deal with those food handlers that we find high priority, we deal with them, we try to get them back on track…I think that has worked, and it is something that we can improve upon and further expand in time,” he stated.
One of the major roles of CBH is to conduct inspections at food service establishments to ensure that the foods served to the general public are safe and wholesome, according to their website.
Food-borne illness refers to any sickness resulting from the consumption of foods and beverages contaminated with, in most cases, bacteria, viruses, or parasites.
Food poisoning, a well-known type of food-borne illness, is caused by the presence of toxins, often produced by bacteria, according to britannica.com.
