Virginia Jorgensen (centre) with her cohort at the 2012 Summer Games in London.
I am an Environmental Health Officer working in Communicable Disease Control with Vancouver Coastal Health. On August 13, I returned from London England on the same flight into Vancouver as many of the Canadian athletes returning from the 2012 Summer Olympics. I had just spent three weeks working at the London Games as an Environmental health Officer.
I joined a volunteer workforce of over 120 Environmental Health professionals from England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada. We completed over 800 visits during the Olympic Games across over 20 venues. Our expertise was used to support the attainment of the high standards of food hygiene, diversity, and sustainability which was laid out by the Food Vision developed by the London Organizing committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOC).
The 2012 Summer Olympics has been the largest peace-time catering operation in the world. The challenge initially was simply the scale of the undertaking but after the first official day or two, this was managed quite effectively. As a team leader, I led small teams of 2 or 3 environmental health officers behind the scenes at various venues, working with and alongside the catering contractors and venue managers using a risk based and red, amber green approach to look mainly at food safety, water and waste, and health and safety. In the production and finishing kitchens we also conducted ATP sampling.
It was an honour and a privilege for me to work with these dedicated and committed Environmental Health Officers. The environmental health professionals, who organized and orchestrated this, including Vanessa Karakilic from Vancouver, did an amazing job and the caterers and venue managers were also very committed. Despite the long hours and miles of walking on sites such as the 500 acre Olympic Park, we also enjoyed what we were doing and did manage to catch glimpses of events during the games. It was a very exciting time to be in London.