Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Home Cooking Without a License

MURFREESBORO — The state Department of Agriculture is enforcing food safety rules that prevent jams, ice cream and bread and certain other processed foods made in home kitchens from being sold at the local Farmers Market.

The rules that began being enforced last month have affected some longtime food vendors who were preparing their goods in the same kitchen where they cook for their families.

[...]

Agriculture Department officials said the rules aim to prevent food poisoning by requiring that such goods be prepared in a commercial-style kitchen with washable floors, walls and ceilings, tight-fitting doors and screened windows.

"Basically, no food can be made in your residence. It must be in a separate kitchen, which could be in the same house," said Buddy Woodson, a food and dairy administrator with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

Associated Press,
Rules shutting down foods sales from home kitchens


The article even lacks any of the de rigeur horror stories about E. coli poisonings of children or concealed razor-blades slicing innocents' tongues. "Preventive laws" are too often only the manufactured illusions of bureaucratic foresight. One of Rod Dreher's better sections in his Crunchy Con book described how food, the literal victuals of family life, has had its preparation outsourced from the home. Now government has impoverished local culture a little bit more, acting yet again to fix what nobody thought was broken.

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