question about il/legal food ingredients in restaurants

hi all,

A question for the legally knowledgeable:

Trying to find the answer to the question - what foods can a Chicago area restaurant serve, and what can they not serve.

Can a Chicago restaurant serve horsemeat, dogmeat, kittens, etc. (What is the law by which restaurants cannot serve human flesh?).

The Chicago Board of Health says that they rely upon a list of approved foods from the USDA. The USDA says that no such list exists - and never has. They suggested we contact the Illinois Division of Food, Drug, and Dairy, who says they don't have such a list either.

Where, or where, might a girl be able to get such a list (or be able to find the laws themselves)?

Michaela

This Chicago Tribune opinion piece is an interesting read, although it doesn't answer your question. That law, if also passed by the Senate, it trying to make processing horses into meat illegal in the United States. Individual states have passed their own laws to make horsemeat illegal to sell. Illinois passed the Illinois Horse Meat Act to make it illegal to package it for human consumption in Illinois. It's still not illegal to eat it, though. California did pass a law in 1998 that made it illegal to restaurants to sell horse meat.

I did not realize that Dekalb had one of only three horse processing plants in the country.

There was a Trib article a month or so ago about busting illegal meat (I don't remember if it was an NYC or Chi situation). Some of it is just plain illegal, things like endangered species. Others would be legal if butchered by government-inspected places (frogs, rabbits, etc.).

thanks for these leads. I'm still looking for laws, so would be grateful for additional feedback.

The Dekalb horse processing plant has been a related area controversy. It sells retired racehorse meat to France and they're trying to outlaw it (so far not yet).