In 2014, three North Star vending booths were shut down at the Western Montana Fair after large quantities of meat were found that had not been refrigerated for multiple days. Since then, the Missoula City-County Health Department has been monitoring the vendors, and, according to Fairground Director Todd Garrett, they will be back serving food in 2016.

"In 2014, some of their food vendors did not pass the health inspection, and our health department worked with them to provide some protective things that they could do," Garrett said."They satisfied our health department, then in 2015, they came back and put on a fantastic carnival, so the were allowed to come back again."

Vendors at the western Montana Fair usually sign up with three year contracts, with possible extensions. This year the fair will consider new contracts for 2017.

"They have been out here since at least 2013," Garrett said. This spring we'll be doing requests for proposals for both stock and carnival contracts. Both of those are coming up, so we'll be doing requests for proposals for both stock and carnival contracts later on this spring."

New rules were instituted after the 2014 incident with North Star including a training class requirement for food vendor workers and a required health department inspection, which will be performed this year as well.

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