CANTON -- Another annual event is going by the wayside as the state Health Department won't allow the Canton Winterfest chili cookoff to take place Saturday at the VFW as it is structured now.

Canton Chamber of Commerce's Sally Hill says it wasn't a complete surprise since the Winterfest pea-soup-and-johnnycake feed put on by Traditional Arts in Upstate New York was stopped by the department, because of concerns that it hadn't been prepared in a certified kitchen.

"The VFW's kitchen has been inspected," Hill said, but the chili to be entered in the cookoff would have been prepared in the kitchens of each entrant and not at the VFW, and would have been served to the public.

The Health Department has been cracking down in recent years on public events where meals are served and where the kitchens used to prepare them aren't approved.