Gail Alexan­der

Watch what you eat af­ter those floods!

Flood wa­ters may car­ry silt, raw sewage, and mi­cro-or­gan­isms such as bac­te­ria, virus­es, and par­a­sites that can make food un­safe and cause dis­eases, the Health Min­istry warned yes­ter­day.

The Min­istry ad­vised small and large food re­tail­ers not to use, sell, or dis­trib­ute any food items that had been in con­tact with flood wa­ters, in­clud­ing in­gre­di­ents, pre­pared food and bot­tled wa­ter.

“All such items should be sep­a­rat­ed to pre­vent con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of oth­er food items that were not ex­posed to flood wa­ters,” the Min­istry said.

The warn­ing was di­rect­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly at restau­ran­teurs, hote­liers, guest house own­ers, su­per­mar­ket own­ers, mar­ket ven­dors, and oth­er food han­dlers, in­clud­ing cater­ers and road­side ven­dors.

“Giv­en the in­stances of flood­ing in com­mu­ni­ties through­out the coun­try, the Min­istry re­it­er­ates the im­por­tance of the pro­vi­sion of safe food to our pop­u­la­tion.”

Re­tail­ers were ad­vised to store any food items de­liv­ered by sup­pli­ers on or af­ter last Sat­ur­day sep­a­rate­ly from stock pre­vi­ous­ly on hand. These goods must be in­spect­ed for ev­i­dence of con­tact with flood­wa­ters such as wet la­bels/ pack­ag­ing, residue such as mud or silt, and stains.

Re­tail­ers have been ad­vised to con­tact the of­fices of the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cers of Health for fur­ther in­struc­tions on how to man­age food items. Con­tact in­for­ma­tion for these of­fices are avail­able on the Min­istry of Health’s web­site, www.health.gov.tt.

The Min­istry said pub­lic health in­spec­tors would be vis­it­ing restau­rants, ho­tels, guest­hous­es, su­per­mar­kets and oth­er food premis­es to con­duct in­spec­tions and seize and de­stroy con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed food items.