Santa Fe, NM (KKOB) – Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has ordered the immediate resumption of routine health and food safety inspections across New Mexico. The inspections had been paused by the Environment Department’s Health Bureau due to funding concerns.
In a statement, the governor said “The Environment Department’s decision to halt inspections was premature.”
The Environmental Health Bureau oversees inspections of food service establishments, public pools, and septic systems statewide. The bureau’s inspectors typically conduct about seventeen-thousand inspections each year.
The reason for the suspension of the inspections according to the Environment Department was due to a lack of funding from the state legislature. The health division had requested $1.2 million from the legislature in the last session but the funding wasn’t awarded. Albuquerque and Bernalillo County have their own food inspection departments, but the state still does inspections of some of the public facilities.
State Rep. Nathan Small, of Las Cruces, who chairs the Legislative Finance Committee, pushed back on the idea the Legislature has given the Environment Department’s work a lower priority. The department will receive a roughly 9% increase in recurring funding for fiscal year 2027.
