Third Instalment
As if the weighty responsibilities associated with monitoring consignments of foods being imported into Guyana for sale to the consuming public were not enough, the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department (GA&FDD) has other equally weighty responsibilities that have to do with monitoring the safety of street-vended foods. The Department’s Director, Marlan Cole concedes that in relation to this particular responsibility the GA&FDD is doing its best in what is a far from ideal situation. Like everything else, he says, it is a question of “doing as much as you can.”
Cole concedes that what can sometimes make street-vended foods a public health threat is the ease with which a vendor can duck beneath the monitoring radar. “The laws are there,” he says. “The challenge lies in enforcing them.” To the question of the extent of the health risk Cole declines to indulge in estimation. He says that judging from the attention deficit suffered by this small sub-sector of the industry “there has to be some measure of risk out there.”