Food Vendors Keep Health Inspectors Busy

Health inspectors on the trail of illegal food vendors talk of their tally of violations found on the streets: raw fish kept in malfunctioning freezers; cheese prepared in home bathtubs and sold in balls; pigs roasted on a home barbecue grill and sold from a gardener’s truck.

One Anaheim inspector recently stumbled across carne adobada--a Mexican dish of pork marinated in red sauce--served from the back of a 1976 Ford Pinto wagon.

Throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties, authorities report that increasing numbers of licensed and illicit vendors are selling food from trucks, vans, pushcarts and even purloined supermarket carts.

The burgeoning popularity of these mobile markets--most of them catering to immigrants seeking convenient, cheap eats reminiscent of their homeland--is raising concerns among authorities who say food exposed to outdoor elements is at greater risk of becoming tainted.

“It’s anything goes out there,” said John W. Poole, Anaheim code enforcement manager.

In Los Angeles County, officials estimate that there are 6,500 legal vendors and at least 3,000 illegal ones. Orange County has more than 2,000 licensed vendors, an all-time high, and officials said they come across anywhere from 150 to 250 illegal food carts a year.

“More and more people are attempting quick cash-and-carry operations,” said Art Tilzer, director for the Los Angeles County consumer protection bureau. “It’s dangerous to the consumer, and it’s a nightmare for enforcement.”

Officials stress that most vendors provide safe food prepared under sanitary conditions. Also, it is not known how many people are sickened by tainted vendor foods because hospitals don’t keep such records.

Doctors who work in immigrant neighborhoods said patients are unlikely to seek medical attention for stomachaches and diarrhea--two of the most common reactions to eating tainted food.

Inspectors are struggling to keep up with the workload, and detecting unlicensed vendors has become little more than a game of “cat and mouse,” one inspector said.

Los Angeles has 27 inspectors, some teaming up with police to “sweep” neighborhoods in search of illegal vendors. In an average year, they seize more than 2,000 illegal carts, Tilzer said.

Orange County has four inspectors devoted to covering more than 2,000 mobile vendors, and the workload is so heavy that officials are seeking a fifth.

Unlicensed vendors are considered the biggest public health threat because officials have no idea how the food is prepared or stored. Officials said illicit pushcarts often operate on weekends at parks and special events, catering, for example, to customers at swap meets or soccer games.

“It doesn’t take much to get a cart and cut some fruit,” Tilzer said.

Customers say that buying sliced fruit from a street cart is as natural to them as driving through the local McDonald’s for a burger.

“I grew up on this food,” said Fernando Rodriguez, a Los Angeles painter and immigrant from Mexico who frequents the tamale cart vendors in the Westlake district. “It’s convenient; you can eat on the run.”

But not everyone is happy with the curbside sales.

Residents and merchants from Anaheim to Van Nuys have complained about litter left on the streets by some pushcart customers.

In Santa Ana, officials are working on a voluntary program that calls for downtown vendors to purchase new carts with a uniform look and safety features such as sinks with running water.

In a similar effort, Los Angeles last year opened the city’s first “sidewalk vendor district” in MacArthur Park. The district is designed to reduce the number of illicit pushcarts by welcoming vendors into certain areas as long as they are licensed and inspected and use certain types of designer carts.

The program has met with guarded praise from nearby merchants, who hope it will reduce the number of unlicensed vendors. But in other areas, some residents feel overwhelmed.

“The problem is out of control,” said Dave Brees, member of the Oakview Property Owners Assn. in Huntington Beach, an eight-square-block neighborhood where two or more vendors park on each street.

For health officials, the top concern isn’t litter or perceived blight but whether the food is safe.

Orange County health inspector Donna Gomez said the most common violations are vendors selling items that need refrigeration, selling single items that must be sold in packages, and storing packages in ways that might allow rodents or chemicals to taint the contents.

On the streets, inspectors face cultural barriers. Most officials do not speak the languages of the various neighborhoods.

Some vendors and consumers do not believe harm could come from doing business the way it has been done for generations in their homelands.

Some vendors know the laws but don’t believe they are necessary.

“We’re in another country, and I know we shouldn’t sell bread this way,” said one Huntington Beach vendor, selling unpackaged rolls. “But that’s the way it’s sold. It’s the way people are used to buying it.”

Day after day, year after year, inspector Gomez talks to the vendors of Santa Ana. She tells them of the health risks. Many of the trucks are licensed and clean. But that doesn’t mean the rules are being followed.

Over the last four years, vendor Manuel Ochoa has been inspected by Gomez several times.

Recently Gomez noticed that Ochoa was selling 300 eggs without refrigeration. She confiscated them--at a loss of $40.

Ochoa said: “I can’t refrigerate the eggs. The people, they don’t want to buy them that way. They say they don’t cook as well.”

Over the last decade, cities have moved to more strictly regulate where and when vendors can operate, such as requiring pushcarts to move every 20 minutes or so.

And even when county health inspectors do come across violations, officials said their goal is less to punish or prosecute vendors than to instruct them on the importance of food safety.

A major focus in Los Angeles County is putting illegal vendors out of business. The county’s health department has a hotline that allows residents to report unauthorized carts. After receiving several reports, a team of food inspectors, code enforcement officers and police officers fan out over a neighborhood, confiscating illegal carts.

“What we need to do is raise awareness in the churches and community groups that this is a danger,” said Tilzer, head of Los Angeles County’s consumer protection bureau.