Hacker News Reader

Comment by _delirium | Hacker News Reader

With food in particular there aren't actually that many places in the western world where you can legally run an unlicensed/uninspected operation at significant scale. People think of Texas, for example, as a libertarian-leaning state, but it's actually completely illegal in TX to sell home-prepared food, even at church bake sales (though in practice it's not enforced for small-scale charity bake sales). There are a handful of states that have recently passed "cottage food laws" that allow people to sell home-baked goods in certain categories below a certain volume, so e.g. it's now legal in Ohio to sell modest amounts of cupcakes and cookies and whatever. But not that many, and most don't cover food outside of baked goods and perhaps some kinds of home preserves (marmalades and similar).

View on HN

I like where these cottage food laws are going. I'm just thinking out loud, but I'd be interested in seeing a system where smaller outfits would simply be required to post some kind of notification that they are unlicensed/uninspected. This might also be accompanied by a higher cap on claims resulting from food poisoning lawsuits or something similar.

From a policy maker point of view this would be saying 'we are going to allow unsafe goods to be sold'. While I personally agree with the sentiment, it's never going to happen.

What? Your Mom bakes unsafe cookies?

Huh?

Joe's point was that your mom's kitchen is neither licensed nor inspected by the state. Yet, she served you baked goods out of that kitchen. The false implication that unlicensed == unsafe is what he was commenting on.

If they were safe enough for you to eat, they're probably safe enough for me to eat, regardless of whether she has a seal from the state.

Oh I see. But that's unrelated to the discussion. Fact is that to produce and sell food outside of the 'home' setting requires a license, for food safety reasons. While we (or rather, other people - myself I'm not so much interested in that discussion) could argue about whether or not that's warranted, fact is that such regulations exist and they are very unlikely to go away.

Now, while technically 'unlicensed' does not equal 'unsafe', the existence of 'licensed' outfits, for safety reasons, does mean that 'unlicensed' means 'we cannot verify the safety'. Which, realistically, is as good as 'unsafe' in terms of pressure against it.

(This is not a discussion about actual food safety, this is about processes and pressures on policy makers and perceptions of control.)

(edit: add 'un' to 'likely')

Of course its going away; folks have commented on this - allowing church bake sales etc.

Agreed on other points however. There are Mom's Kitchens I would definitely NOT want to eat out of. And licensing means (or used to mean) inspecting.

That's interesting. I was wondering about this in the context of a site like etsy where there are dozens of people selling baked goods over the internet.

My guess is that a lot of that stuff violates local laws, but going after them would be a hassle and unpopular. Especially when they're really small-scale businesses selling things that are unlikely to cause food poisoning (mostly baked goods, rather than home-smoked pork or something), and doing so person-to-person rather than via a physical storefront.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com