BRIAN SANDOVAL

Governor

RICHARD WHITLEY, MS

Director

/

STATE OF NEVADA

/ MARTA E. JENSEN
Acting Administrator

TRACEY D. GREEN, MD

Chief Medical Officer

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

DIVISION OF PUBLIC AND BEHAVIORAL HEALTH

4150 Technology Way, Suite 300
Carson City, Nevada 89706
Telephone: (775) 684-4200 · Fax: (775) 684-4211

NEVADA STATE REPORT – HELENA 2015

Our 2015 State of Nevada Legislative session wrapped in late spring. Notable changes include a clarification of administrative authority in NRS 583 that will result in the State Department of Agriculture having administrative and regulatory authority, to include permitting and inspection, of custom slaughter and wholesale meat distributors throughout the state. Nevada State Department of Agriculture is also in the process of introducing a craft food program that will allow home preparation and canning of low acid canned foods. Nevada Department of Public and Behavioral Health, EHS, will retain the shellfish program, which remains the program with the largest per capita inland consumption of shellfish in the entire country.

Nevada’s regulatory organizational structure had changed last time this report was given. It has changed further. Nevada continues to be divided into four regulatory jurisdictions, Southern Nevada Health District in the south that encompasses Las Vegas and greater Clark County; Washoe County District Health Department in the far west central part of the state that encompasses the greater Reno-Sparks area; Carson City Health and Human Services in Carson City. Carson City took Douglas County under their regulatory umbrella in July of 2014. Effective July 1, 2015 Southern Nevada Health District has taken over the state owned facilities within their county. These were primarily food establishments on the UNLV and community college campuses in Clark County. We continue to work with our county partners in these transitions and realize that this is an administrative management model closer to most of our state partners.

We are starting the fourth fiscal year as an agency that no longer is dependent on state general funds. We collect fees, by billing quarterly assessments, from the 14 counties in which we perform environmental health duties. Our facility permit fees remain frozen and have not increased since 2007. The split is 70% fees paid by regulated facilities and 30% county assessment.

The 2015 Nevada State Legislature eliminated furloughs for state workers. They did restore merit step increases for those employees that are not at the top of their classifications. A 1% pay increase was obtained, but state employee’s mandatory contributions into the retirement system increased. A program called longevity pay, designed to incentivize employees by paying longevity bonuses was eliminated by statute. All of these factors impact our ability to hire qualified environmental staff who wish to remain employed by the state in a career, long-term.

EHS has had several staff changes in the rural Elko field office and in Ely. We remain intent on hiring young career minded EHS professionals to carry the EHS program into the future. The transition, last year of the management of cottage foods, recall information dissemination, Burning Man and the shellfish program from senior staff to staff who are not approaching retirement as others are has been very successful.

Nevada is recovering statewide from the great recession with employment numbers increasing and the housing market rebounding in the south, but markedly in the north- with housing prices in the Reno-Sparks area up 20% across the board thanks to Tesla, Switch, Amazon, and many other very large industries located in Storey and Washoe Counties. Gaming revenues state-wide are up. The northern part of the state has been shaky economically due to market drops in the prices of precious minerals, including primarily, gold. Nonetheless, Nevada in and of itself remains one of the world’s leading producers of gold.

We have had no outbreaks in our regulated facilities in 2015 thus far.

We completed 98% of all mandated inspections within their statutory time frames in calendar year 2014 and are on track to do even better in 2015. We are also following up on our critical violations with much improved timeliness.

We remain enrolled in and committed to the retail food regulatory program standards. We received grant dollars from FDA to work on re-doing our self-assessment and that project is complete. The Nevada Food Borne Illness Defense workgroup, whose mission it is to satisfy the requirements under standard 5 for both the retail and manufactured standards remains active and is working together statewide. Our focus remains on performing risk based inspections and educating our operators.

Since the passage of the new food code, in December, 2013, we have worked hard to implement and enforce training for PIC’s in food establishments. It’s a huge shift for our program but we are making good progress and we are suspending permits for those establishments that do not comply with this important requirement.

Burning Man will be held the week prior to Labor Day. We are gearing up for another busy year on the playa and hope to do as well with our inspection numbers of permitted food establishments as we did last year. Population estimates for this year’s event are in the 70,000’s. As of this writing, the playa is covered in insects, which is a first ever occurrence. There are also mosquitoes due to a wet spring. And this year for the first time ever, EHS will camp in town with the masses rather than with law enforcement personnel. (I’ll have a complete run down of highlights from the podium.)

In addition to Burning Man, we regulated a second mass gathering event, the wildly popular and ever growing “Night in the Country” held in tiny Yerington, Nevada. This three day music festival featuring big name country music stars brought 13,000 participants to Yerington this year and we inspected some 20 temporary permits in the process of regulating the event.

We’d like to thank John Marcello, and Allen Gelfius as well as the other members of the FDA training cadre for bringing the Food Code Course to northern Nevada early this past spring. The turnout was very good and the class was excellent.