The hotline for New York City regarding food poisoning case has received over 350 calls in three years as complaints about food carts continue to be the reason for falling ill. According to the officials, the most common reasons are tainted food, workers not wearing gloves, and roaches found on carts thus resulting to officials being called out to work out stricter regulations.
According to statistics more than half of the 350 plus who complained from June 2011 to June 2014 are from Manhattan and they pressed that the carts are operating under lax laws and regulations.
According to Daniel Biederman, the president of the 34th Street Partnership, the enforcement is just very looks and they have been asking the Health Department as well as the Consumer Affairs to look into this and come up with regulations regarding appearances and cleanliness of the food carts.
Biederman added that this situation has gone out of control and pressed that the carts are getting bigger, uglier and are unfair for the sit-down restaurants who are paying taxes and has to employ people.
The food carts that have been complained include Greek, Indian, Korean, Italian and Mexican foods. Most of the side effects of food poisoning include projectile vomiting, stomach pains, and even three days of diarrhea.
These complaints have been investigated by the Health Department's Office of Environmental Investigations and they have made three categories regarding the complaints namely isolated incident, unverifiable due to a caller's refusal to give out his or her name and those that already call for a cart inspection.
However, the carts are said to move from one location to another so it makes it difficult for officials to conduct the inspection. Due to this, the department has imposed over $3.7 million fines but has only collected $1.2 million in three years.
There are over 5,100 food carts in the city and each is inspected every two years. The spokesman for the Health Department released a statement noting that they try to conduct at least one surprise inspection annually. In addition to this, the department also aims to put the grades they have recorded for the inspected food carts online so as to let customers know how safe the foods are being served in specific carts.