Commentary: Church suppers are dangerous, and must be regulated. So says the FDA

5

The opinions stated here represent those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of MorristownGreen.com.

By Ray (Jerry) Friant

Your government also sees danger in volunteer fire department fund-raisers that serve food. And in Boy Scout spaghetti dinners of appreciation.

In fact, any “institution” that serves food to someone that eats it must be regulated by a government agency.

So says the FDA’s Office of Food Safety, Retail Food Staff.

And the regulations apply regardless of whether there is a charge…and regardless of tax category! All 501c(3) charities are now “retail” establishments if they serve food to anyone, and will be regulated as such.

Ray "Jerry" Friant, MorristownGreen.com columnist and author of 'Beyond Buzzwords: The New Agenda for Directors, CEOs & Executives.'
Ray "Jerry" Friant, MorristownGreen.com columnist and author of 'Beyond Buzzwords: The New Agenda for Directors, CEOs & Executives.'

Across America, there is a hue and cry from individuals, citizen groups, and even members of Congress to reduce the size of government. But little gets done to rein in the cost of big government. One reason is that government is both self-perpetuating and growth-oriented.

This blog is a case study. It describes how the FDA has morphed the meaning of language to expand, and expand, and expand its web of control.

In 2011, incensed that Morristown’s health department had forced the Community Soup Kitchen’s costs to rise by $150,000 per year to meet regulations, I and others complained to the Morristown mayor, to no avail. We were told that the health department’s hands are tied: They are complying with State of New Jersey regulations.

Make no mistake. I believe in food safety. So does the soup kitchen’s management and every volunteer. And we all are proud that the Morristown charity has served a hot meal to every hungry person in the community daily for 27 years without ever having had a food-safety complaint!

Our soup kitchen meals have been 100 percent safe, and were safe long before the health department got involved.

So with state Assemblyman Tony Bucco’s help and encouragement, I approached the state. After a bureaucratic delay (that Gov. Christie’s office was able to break), the state said it was the federal FDA food code of 2009 that was being implemented.

Being naĂŻve, I wrote the FDA (copying Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, whose office kept bugging the FDA for an answer) and asked if it intended to regulate church suppers — fully expecting the answer to be: “No. The food code of 2009 only applies to commercial suppliers and retail food establishments.”

Wrong! In a page-and-a-half response, the FDA said, “Yes.” Well, not a one-word yes. Rather a convoluted yes.

FDA’s diabolical process in getting to “yes” was to morph the meaning of language from something that Congress gave it oversight over (i.e., retail food establishments) to something that expanded its control. To do this, FDA redefined “Retail Food Establishment.” The word “retail” has been eliminated and replaced with a definition of Food Establishment as follows (as copied from the food code of 2009 that has been adopted as regulation by 49 of 50 states):

(1) “Food establishment” means an operation that:

1. (a) stores, prepares, packages, serves, vends food directly to the consumer, or otherwise provides FOOD for human consumption such as a restaurant; satellite or catered feeding location; catering operation if the operation provides FOOD directly to a CONSUMER or to a conveyance used to transport people; market; vending location; conveyance used to transport people; institution; or FOOD bank; and

2. (b) relinquishes possession of FOOD to a CONSUMER directly, or indirectly through a delivery service such as home delivery of grocery orders or restaurant takeout orders, or delivery service that is provided by common carriers.

The word “institution” in 1(a) above is so broad that every organization, including every church, every charity, and every social organization, falls within its reach.

Every dictionary in the world defines “retail” as the sale of product to end users. But by morphing the word “retail,” our government has effectively eliminated the concept of “sale” and thereby cast its oversight net to include every non-business private sector organization.

This “Big Brother knows best” usurping of power infuriates me for several reasons:

• It raises the cost of government.
• It infringes charitable giving by effectively demanding excessive added cost to meet inapplicable and unnecessary regulations.
• It enforces a “one size solution fits all” set of regulations embodied in a thousand pages of fine print…regulations that are designed for a full service commercial restaurant that operates 24 hours a day.
• It doesn’t allow “safe temperatures practices” to be used in “institutions” such as churches and soup kitchens…rather it demands blind compliance to the thousand-page regulation.

I never imagined that our government would use fear and intimidation against the vulnerable to gain compliance — but that is what it has done and continues to do.

Let me explain. Morristown’s soup kitchen has been feeding the hungry every day for 27 years without ever having a complaint about food poisoning.

Nevertheless, when the town health department said the soup kitchen had to comply with government regulations or be shut down, the soup kitchen management (whose mission it is to feed the hungry) capitulated and complied.

Staff members were told that for the first infraction they would get a warning, for the second infraction a fine, and for the third, they would be shut down. Our government would rather that the hungry not eat than for one of its unnecessary rules to be broken!

Hey, does that make you proud to be an American? Well, it disgusts me!

Another thing that disgusts me is the government’s “One Solution Fits All” mentality. The food code’s requirements are written to make full service restaurants safe throughout the day, every day. And the government attitude is that unless the food chain is in the hands of regulated bodies, it is not safe.

Ergo, regulate all charities and 501c(3) entities that serve food — because they are institutions. Force them to have expensive, government-approved kitchens, certified staffs, trained volunteers, and the list goes on.

Further, there isn’t a provision for a “one-off” meal — that is, a limited menu meal that is prepared, served, and cleaned up over a short span of a few hours.

Me? I plan to stay disgusted until the following becomes the law of the land…or someone explains to me why the following is unreasonable:

Churches, temples, 501c(3) charities, soup-kitchens, and community organizations (such as volunteer fire departments, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, etc.) are entitled to prepare and serve “one-off” meals without submitting to government oversight and regulation whether or not there is a charge.

Though not regulated, these entities would always be encouraged to follow food safety procedures to insure that wholesome, safe food is served to their patrons. Procedures such as:

• All soup be boiled before serving…i.e., 212 degrees F.
• All “Potentially Hazardous Food” be raised to at least 185 degrees F before serving. (Restaurant regulations call for “Potentially Hazardous Food” to be raised to 165 F for 15 seconds.)
• Volunteer and worker cleanliness be observed.
• Kitchen cleanliness be maintained.
• Fruits and vegetables be washed before serving.
• Soup kitchen guests be served by workers or volunteers not allowed to “handle” food with unwashed hands.
• Uneaten hazardous food be cooled and refrigerated to ensure continued safety.

By keeping government regulations out of churches, the cost of government goes down, the cost of charities goes down, the hungry will be fed, and we can teach our children the joy and responsibility of giving back. Doesn’t that make sense?

For my church (which has a stainless steel kitchen but only a two-tub sink, and therefore cannot be government- approved as a safe kitchen because it isn’t a three-tub sink), it would mean that our junior high school students can again prepare chicken-vegetable soup once a month after church services. Soup to be taken to the soup kitchen to alleviate hunger.

By the way, isn’t safe food handling taught by parents and schools and practiced all across American in all of our homes day-in and day-out without government watching to make sure we are safe???  You bet it is!

But you can also bet that the relentless pursuit by socialist-leaning ultra-liberals who read this blog will point to some obscure statistical study as a means to kill the reasonable efforts of reasonable people to rein in big government by trimming the out-of-control regulation tree.

And being a skeptic, you can also bet that few elected official will voluntarily get involved to reform the food code unless there is a strong demand by you, the citizens. They won’t have time, as they focus on their own re-election issues. And they fear the power of the FDA.

Ray (Jerry) Friant lives in Morris Township, belongs to the Morristown United Methodist Church and is active with Morris Habitat for Humanity. The retired corporate turnaround executive is the author of Beyond Buzzwords.

MORE COLUMNS BY RAY FRIANT

5 COMMENTS

  1. I’m sorry to have to disagree. One positive that came from Covid imo were the increased cleaning protocols on grocery stores, all stores, and anywhere there were humans touching surfaces with their hands. Sadly, most of those practices have gone away. Directly because of those actions the flu season was practically non-existent for two years.

  2. Currently, we are inundated with an excess of Federal Czars whose function can only be justified by promulgating regulations. Not by enacted laws but by imposed regulation that has little recourse for redress of discrepancy. This increasing encroachment of government regulation into our lives outreaches the needs of a functioning society already behaving ethically or even just in it’s own best interest.

    Jerry has shown that there is obviously more harm than good in a process that intrudes to intimidate an already functioning society.

    The history of government is that it seldom arrives at the goal it’s regulation intends while simultaneously suppressing the initiation of proper concern provided by local control. The misconception and corruption of the regulatory process over time is a characteristic historic outcome and suggests that it is one that should be opposed.

    Thanks, Jerry for pointing that out, again

  3. Expanding FDA food serving regulations from retail establishments to charitable and community organizations is an example that trying to eliminate Type 1 error – i.e. to reduce the probability of food poisoning to zero by applying one set of rules to all situations – increases Type 2 error – the probability that equally safe, but situationally unique “one off” food serving organizations are abandoned.

    Jerry Friant cites the dollar costs of the increased regualtion process and the costs (benefits lost) to the welfare of a caring community. Further, He and Balir Bravo, above, observe that the government’s expanding regulation implies not just the desire for procedural consistency, but the assumption that citizen responsibility is limited when organizations are not governmnet controlled.

    The recent history of irresponsible behavior in some organizational sectors gave increased government control a prescriptive role. This reaction was unfortunate for those organizations, which acted responsibly then and still do.

    Since there is no problematic incident much less trend behind the FDA’s expanded regulation into non-retail food service activities, I heartily support the agency’s backing off. Community organizions would have their own food safety procedures, like the list cited above in Jerry’s blog, which apply to their situations. What might be helpul would be for the FDA to publish findings from its global retail oversignt that other organizations could access and apply when judged useful to their particular “one off’ food serving situations.

  4. Jerry, you are so right. Having the government tell its citizens it knows food handling better than us–whether a non profit or individuals, is an insult. Those of us running non profits have every incentive to be clean and careful with food handling. After all, we are the ones that depend on donor dollars to keep our doors open. One food poisoning event would jeopardize our entire mission! Thanks for your eloquent and articulate (as usual!) observation. People should make sure their legislators are aware of this game-changer regulation.

  5. It’s too bad the FDA isn’t this zealous in protecting Americans from the poisonous GMOs in food.

LEAVE A REPLY