Sanitation

The major of vendors in the city of Port of Spain, sell food such as vegetables and fish. Very few of the vendors actually deviate from that trend. These vendors could be considered food vendors to an extent.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines street food as

"ready-to-eat food prepared and sold by vendors and hawkers, especially in streets and other similar public places."

The reason why I personally consider them as food vendors is because they sell food items, some which can be eaten readily for example fruits.


It's not to say that the vendor who is selling the fish in the above picture is not being very hygienic about this produce. My issues with this was was that enough ice to keep the fish at the temperature needed so that bacteria production would not happen. The fish is displayed in a rectangular type container, where does all the melted water from the ice drain out to? Does it stay inside of the container with the fish? If it is being let out, the water would be mixed with the blood of the fish and fall right next into the drain right where the fish monger's stall is located. Might I add that this stall is located partway in the drain? My other worry when I saw this was the little white and orange feline who kept making circles around the fish monger. Cats are known carriers of several diseases such as rabies and their stool is also known to carry deadly diseases also. 

All street vendors vend at the sides of the road which is commonly known as the drain. From all the previous pictures posted on this blog not one showed any place that had the availability of running water. I am sure we all suppose that they each walk with their own water supply but, how sure are we of that? From my visit to town I saw a few people with a generous water supply to keep their produce hydrated and clean. 

According to the report from the 2002 Wroking Group on Street Food Vendors, some regulations that vendors must follow when dealing with the sale of food are

• "structural requirements, sanitary facilities, potable water supply requirement, waste handling requirements, and general hygiene established by the health system for preparing and handling food safely.

• Street food vendors are often not equipped with proper facilities for the storage of hot and cold foods.

•  Where present, storage conditions often leave much to be desired. For example, in the majority of the cases, food is stored at room temperature in plastic containers. The uncooked food products, especially meat and poultry, are left at ambient temperature for long hours. Therefore, some countries discourage street food vendors from selling items that require cold storage"

Sometimes we think too much of vendors, that they actually come prepared with these things in mind. Say the odd case where a vendor has no water available and their produce falls from the stall into the drain, what does the vendor do? Does he leave it there? Depending on the type of produce it is and how damaged it has gotten for the fall, the vendor would retrieve the fallen produce maybe wipe it and rest it back in the pile where it belongs. Doing so contaminates all the other produce it come into contact with.

There is also the issue of flies. Food attracts flies, particularly house flies. There is no possible way that a person could do five things at once. As the vendor is seeing to a customer flies would land on the produce and in unfortunate cases also lay eggs on the produce.


References

Villas, Mendez, eds. Microbes in Applied Research: Current Advances and Challenges. World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., 2012. Accessed April 10,2014. http://books.google.tt/books?id=pu2uZgoPv6QC&pg=PA266&dq=sanitation+and+street+vending&hl=en&sa=X&ei=i29HU9n2IJLK0AGiuYGgDA&ved=0CFsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=sanitation%20and%20street%20vending&f=false.

Environmental Solutions. "side street food vendors and food safety." Accessed April 9,2014. http://eslcaribbean.com/index.php/articles/item/street-side-food-vendors-and-food-safety.