Three food stalls at the National Multicultural Festival breached food safety regulations, resulting in health authorities having to destroy ''potentially contaminated'' foods.
A team of seven public health officers were sent to the weekend's festival in a crackdown on food stalls that saw roughly 100 inspections over Friday and Saturday.
The Health Protection Service treats the festival as a ''high risk event'' for food safety, and regularly sends officers to make sure the festival's huge range of food stalls comply with health standards.
The breaches found at this year's multicultural festival were focused on food storage, temperature control and hand washing, an ACT Health spokeswoman told The Canberra Times.
Authorities were forced to destroy food from a number of stalls, and immediately resolved a number of hygiene breaches.
''There were three breaches that resulted in the destruction of foods and several instances of hygiene breaches that were rectified on site,'' the spokeswoman said.
''As the MCF is a high-risk event in terms of food safety, the HPS engages closely with the event organisers and works with stall holders prior to the event to ensure that all food safety basics are understood.''
Canberra Multicultural Community Forum chairman Sam Wong said he hadn't heard any concerns from stallholders about the food safety crackdown.
''I only praise the work of the health protection service, and we are happy to work with them and also work with the community to make things right,'' Mr Wong said.
''We are happy to listen to any concerns of any sort from all parts of the festival, not just the food,'' he said.
''We're happy to build bridges between the community and the government, and especially the health protection service.''
Multicultural Affairs Minister Joy Burch said food safety inspections were a necessary part of the multicultural festival. ''The people are here to buy food and celebrate food, but there's also a requirement for us to make sure this is a safe festival.''
.gif)
