A health department in Labrador has posted public warnings about rotten and expired food, after reports that people have been foraging in municipal dumps, because they can't afford to buy groceries in the north.

"We became aware that people were actually taking food items that had been thrown out by the stores," Gale Turner, the Nunatsiavut government's director of health services, told CBC News. "You don't know, as well, about sharp objects being hidden, don't know what animals, rabid or otherwise, might be around. There are a lot of risks."

Nunatsiavut, the governing body of the Inuit in Labrador, has no numbers on how many people are going to local landfills to get food, but she's heard reports of the scavenging from every community in Nunatsiavut's jurisdiction.

Sarah Erickson, the angajukKâk, or mayor, of Nain on Labrador's north coast, said scavenging has been happening in her community for years, because northern food subsidies aren't keeping food prices low enough at the stores.

"You listen to how much the province gives out in a subsidy, on top of that is the food-by-mail program, and yet people just can't afford to buy certain things, when you're looking at paying anywhere from $8 to $15 for a box of cereal," she said.

The provincial government pours $600,000 into the Air Foodlift Subsidy program, a subsidy for retail stores in Labrador's coastal communities designed to offset the high cost of flying in perishable foods.