Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Letter to the editor:

Food inspectors invited to east side

While I agree with J. Patrick Coolican’s assessment in his column on the lack of discretion exercised on behalf of the Southern Nevada Health District food inspector who closed down a “farm-to-table” event, where are the health inspectors’ enforcement efforts here? The Nellis Boulevard corridor is rife with, well, a food inspectors’ top 10 list of what not to allow.

No receipts? Bingo! No labels? Check! Reused plastic milk jugs? Yep! Not certified meat? Who knows. Proper temperature? Do you trust the Igloo cooler? Licensed? Nope.

I gladly urge any hard-hitting food inspectors to spend some valuable time putting an end to unlicensed, shopping cart food vendors roaming my east Las Vegas neighborhood with overly loud bicycle horns, or the intermittent fruit stands on corners, the person selling cooked items in the Walmart parking lot, or even those selling drinks from an Igloo from the back of a truck, and especially the exploding growth of unlicensed, and consequently uninspected, merchants with food tents that open later at night and only on weekends, thus avoiding detection or accountability.

As for the Southern Nevada Health District’s hotline for illegal food sales, it seems ineffective at best — you leave a message on a prerecorded machine — and the same street vendors are often present again and again.

If inspectors have the time to read ads, make phone inquiries and overreach with strong-arm bleaching tactics on produce at outlying farm-to-table events, maybe the Health District inspectors could simply drive down the street with their windows and eyes open. It just might make a healthy difference.

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