Safety on the Menu

As the sun beat down ever harder, Margarita Espinosa’s plan to walk to a supermarket faded fast.

Instead, the Fullerton woman headed for a vendor who sells groceries from a truck. She made her purchase even though the truck contained some obvious health-code violations, from unrefrigerated eggs to unpackaged rice, cookies and rolls exposed to the elements.

The scene repeats itself more and more in Southern California as growing numbers of vendors sell food from trucks, vans, pushcarts and even purloined supermarket carts. The increasing popularity of the vendors concerns regulators, who say food exposed to outdoor elements is at greater risk of becoming tainted than food from supermarkets or restaurants.

During an informal review of 19 Orange County mobile vendors, The Times found health code violations at 14 of them, ranging from unwrapped doughnuts, buns and sweet bread to unrefrigerated mayonnaise, eggs and milk.

And that’s nothing compared to what some health inspectors have come across: raw fish kept in malfunctioning freezers; cheese prepared in home bathtubs and sold in balls; and pigs roasted on a home barbecue grill and sold from a gardener’s truck.

Anaheim officials recently stumbled across carne adobada--a Mexican dish of pork in red sauce--served from the back of a 1976 Ford Pinto wagon.

“It’s anything goes out there,” said John W. Poole, the city’s code-enforcement manager.

Officials in Orange and Los Angeles counties report jumps in the number of licensed and illicit food vendors, most of them catering to immigrants seeking cheap eats reminiscent of their homelands.

Orange County has more than 2,000 licensed vendors--a record--and officials said they come across 150 to 250 illegal food carts a year as well. In Los Angeles County, officials estimate that there are 6,500 legal vendors and at least 3,000 illegal ones.

“More and more people are attempting quick cash-and-carry operations,” said Art Tilzer, director for the Los Angeles County consumer protection bureau. “It’s dangerous to the consumer, and it’s a nightmare for enforcement.”

Officials stress that most vendors follow health codes and provide safe food prepared under sanitary conditions. But, they said, the potential for harmful bacteria attacking food sold on the streets is significant.

Some vendor carts and trucks lack running hot water or restaurant-like refrigeration--two key features that help keep food fresh and safe in the outdoor elements.

Health inspectors have struggled to keep up with the burgeoning number of vendors--playing what officials describe as a cat-and-mouse game with those without permits.

Orange County has four inspectors devoted to covering more than 2,000 mobile vendors, and the workload is so heavy that officials are seeking a fifth. Los Angeles County has 27 inspectors, with some teaming up with police to “sweep” neighborhoods in search of illegal vendors. On an average year, they nab more than 2,000 illegal carts, Tilzer said.

Unlicensed vendors are considered the biggest public health threat, officials said, because officials have no way of inspecting their offerings and no idea how the food is prepared or stored. Officials said illicit pushcarts often operate on weekends at parks and special events, catering, for example, to customers at swap meets or soccer games.

“It doesn’t take much to get a cart and cut some fruit,” Tilzer said.

No one is sure of the degree to which tainted foods from vendors causes health problems because hospitals don’t keep such records. Doctors said patients are unlikely to seek medical attention for stomach discomfort and diarrhea--two of the most common reactions to eating tainted food.

But one thing is clear: Vendors are become an increasingly familiar part of many Southern California communities, catering mainly to immigrants who are used to the pushing food carts and trucks in Mexico and elsewhere.

Customers say that buying sliced fruit from a street cart is as natural to them as driving through the local McDonald’s for a burger.

“I grew up on this food,” said Fernando Rodriguez, a Los Angeles painter and immigrant from Mexico who frequents the tamale cart vendors on 6th Street in Los Angeles’ Westlake District. “It’s convenient. You can eat on the run.”

The presence of the street vendors has long been controversial, and the growing number of carts--with some unlicensed--has only heightened concerns.

Residents and merchants from Anaheim to Van Nuys have complained about the litter from pushcart customers. This has been a particular concern in downtown Santa Ana, one of the region’s most vibrant Latino business districts where pushcarts offer everything from tacos to fruit.

The city fought for nearly a decade to remove the carts from downtown, only to have its bans struck down by the courts.

Santa Ana is now working on a voluntary program that calls for downtown vendors to buy new carts with a uniform look and safety features such as sinks with running water.

In a similar effort, Los Angeles last year opened the city’s first “sidewalk vendor district” in MacArthur Park. The district is designed to reduce the number of illicit pushcarts by welcoming vendors into certain areas as long as they are licensed and inspected and use certain types of designer carts.

The program has met with guarded praise from nearby merchants who hope it will reduce the number of unlicensed vendors. But in other areas, some residents feel overwhelmed.

“The problem is out of control,” said Dave Brees, member of the Oakview Property Owners Assn. in Huntington Beach, an eight-square-block neighborhood where two or more vendors park on each street.

For health officials, the top concern isn’t litter or perceived blight but whether the food is safe.

Orange County health inspector Donna Gomez said the most common violations are vendors selling unrefrigerated items that need to be, selling items individually that must be sold in packages, and storing packages in ways that might allow rodents or chemicals to taint their contents.

Over and over, inspectors face a cultural barrier. Some vendors and consumers do not believe harm could come from doing business the way it has been done for generations.

Some vendors know the laws but don’t believe they are necessary.

“We’re in another country, and I know we shouldn’t sell bread this way,” said one Huntington Beach vendor, selling unpackaged rolls. “But that’s the way it’s sold. It’s the way people are used to buying it.”

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Language is another problem. Most vendors speak little English; but most of Orange County’s inspectors speak little Spanish.

Residents without cars may go to the supermarket once a week. But they visit someone like Manuel Ochoa on Townsend Street in Santa Ana every day. He’s part of the neighborhood.

Day after day, year after year, inspector Gomez also talks to these vendors. She tells them about the health risks. Many of the trucks--like Ochoa’s--are clean and licensed. But that doesn’t mean all the rules are being followed.

Over the last four years, vendor Ochoa has been inspected by Gomez several times.

At a recent inspection Gomez noticed that Ochoa was selling 300 eggs without refrigeration. She confiscated them--at a $40 loss to him.

Ochoa explained in Spanish: “I can’t refrigerate the eggs. The people, they don’t want to buy them that way. They say they don’t cook as well.”

With only four food inspectors covering all of Orange County, vendors said they are far more likely to be scrutinized by city code enforcement officers than health officials. But these code officers’ primary duty isn’t to inspect the food but to make sure vendors are following city regulations.

Over the last decade, cities have moved to increasingly regulate where and when vendors can operate, such as requiring pushcarts to move every 20 minutes or so.

And even when county health inspectors do find violations, officials said their goal is less to punish or prosecute vendors than to instruct them on the importance of food safety.

In the fiscal year ending in July, 105 violation notices were issued in Orange County. But fewer than 10 produced office hearings, a procedure used to punish vendors who do not heed warnings. The county can file criminal complaints through the district attorney’s office--but that hasn’t happened for five years.

“We see ourselves as educators, teaching people to comply with the law,” Gomez said.

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A major focus in Los Angeles County is putting illegal vendors out of business. That county’s health department has a hotline for residents to report unauthorized carts. After receiving several reports, a team of food inspectors, code enforcement officers and police officers fans out over a neighborhood, confiscating illegal carts.

“What we need to do is raise awareness in the churches and community groups that this is a danger,” said Tilzer, head of Los Angeles County’s consumer protection bureau.

Health-care providers said it’s difficult to trace digestive problems and other food-related illnesses to vendors.

“We see a lot of people who have eaten on the streets,” said Mary Gharid, a pediatrician at Clinica Medica Familiar in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s something we want to watch because of the reported cases of E. coli in hamburgers and juice. But it’s hard to say exactly which food causes an illness.”

Tilzer said consumers would not likely seek medical treatment for common effects of bad food: “No one reports it. And if you don’t have insurance, it’s even less likely.”