A Denver health inspector caught on camera pouring Clorox bleach

NEW: A Denver health inspector caught on camera pouring Clorox bleach on a street vendor’s food.

According to the owner, Isidro Garcia Barrette, about 100 pounds of food was thrown out.

The city of Denver is defending the move, saying they had been issuing warnings and citations for weeks.

“So the clip that went viral, unfortunately, was a very small snippet without any context of an unfortunate action that was occurring,” said Denver’s public health director Danica Lee.

“We don’t have to use bleach, actually, very often, so this was a better than unusual situation.”

“The vendor had been warned multiple times and was in the process of trying to pack food up and lock it up. We did have to take a measure to actually destroy the food.”

Inspectors say they found workers washing their hands in a bucket of dirty water, raw meat sitting out, bad refrigeration and no sanitizer.