In regards to "barriers to entry"....none of what's been posted here looks onerous, in my opinion.

$15,000 to make sure that you don't put multiple people in the hospital? Not a lot of money when compared to what will be spent making sick people well. And that spend has to be amortized over time.

And in regards to "corporate players," the health department agents drive a little faster to big factory that they are worrried about than a local restaurant because a mistake in the former is a far more serious health issue.

Not a lot of money when compared to what will be spent making sick people well.

Not to mention the lawsuits.

Not to mention the tears of the mothers as they bury their dead children who ate pear butter or pickled beets canned by greedy locavore restaurateurs in their insane drive to maximize their profits on in-season organic produce. Will no one stop the carnage?

People sure are quick to jump to lawsuits and death for something we have yet to document has happened once since Jimmy Carter was president.

Anyway, it's not just the 15K for the HACCP report. Per Time Out's excellent article:

That someone, known as a HACCP consultant, charges around $15,000 to produce a plan comprehensive enough to earn approval from both the city and state. For that fee, he or she will first tell you to sink an average of $50,000 into building a separate processing space—the Quartino crew dropped close to 100 grand on a drying box and production area outfitted with a state-of-the-art dehumidistat. As [chef John] Coletta says, “This is not an ordinary cooler. This thing essentially re-creates the microclimate of Northern Italy.” That, and it passes inspection.

So we're up to 65k minimum before you put up your first jar and decide if you even want to do it or not.

Does anyone really not find this a significant discouragement from a potential area of 1) chef creativity 2) support for local growers 3) advocacy for the idea of local eating?

Right. Except that there are other solutions (like outsourcing) besides canning things yourself. It's not necessary for a restaurant to be a cannery for it to use canned food.

I should add that I wasn't clear on what Khaopaat was quoting: you don't need a HACCP consultant to run a restaurant provided you have the required Food Sanitation certificate. You might need a consultant if you're opening a cannery and don't know what the requirements are, in the same way that you might need licensed specialty contractors to put a restaurant into a space that's never had one before (who know about ventilation requirements and fire code, etc.)

Mhays wrote:To me, that's sort of like saying "well, I can't remember all those state and federal laws involved in driving a car, and I can't afford to hire a consultant to watch me drive, so if I get a ticket for running a red light, it's not my fault."

I think you might have misunderstood what the $15,000 goes toward. But to use your car analogy, it's actually more like saying, "I know how to drive a car and all the rules of the road, and have the desire, ability and know-how needed to be a safe driver; however, the process for getting a drivers license is so painful & complicated that I need to pay someone $15,000 to fill out all the various application forms in triplicate, thoroughly document the various minute specifications of the car I intend to buy, write down in detail which routes I plan to take during my day-to-day travels, and how safely I plan to drive while following those routes, and submit all of this documentation to a government employee who doesn't fully understand how driving or cars themselves work. If those applications are approved, I will then have the opportunity to spend $30 on a drivers license and $50,000 on the car of my choice."

Mhays wrote:I worked in a couple coffeeshops and was the designated Sanitation Manager in two places: I took a 2-day course offered by the City for about $250, passed the test and was certified. Admittedly, we didn't have as many variables to deal with as a restaurant, but the rules and education are the same whether you're serving tap water or tartare. I still have the book, it's a small textbook and it wasn't particularly challenging information to take in: specific ways you need to keep things clean, and information on specific foodborne illnesses - I remember that particular attention was paid to botulism and home canning, because apparently it's almost always on the certification test.

Neither I nor the Time Out Chicago article are suggesting that the education process or certification test are an issue here. However, merely learning about canning/curing safety and actually coming up with a plan to submit to the FDA are two very different things. Working in a coffee shop, you might have seen the education/certification aspect, but you'd have absolutely no reason to experience the expensive ordeal described in the TOC article (unless those coffee shops also sold in-house canned and/or cured goods, in which case I stand corrected...and that would be really cool).

Mhays wrote:I have a hard time believing that lack of a HACCP consultant was the issue.

I'm sure people can and do get the FDA's okay to can and/or cure without the aid of an HACCP consultant (Cathy mentioned that she knows people who did just that), but in my opinion, any legal hurdle where one would be better off hiring a high-priced consultant in order to improve the odds of success is a poorly designed one.

Right. Except that there are other solutions (like outsourcing) besides canning things yourself. It's not necessary for a restaurant to be a cannery for it to use canned food.

But why is it desirable to put the chefs at arm's length from the food he/she's preparing, and deny him/her the ability to do something personally that millions of home cooks have done for centuries? Why dismiss one more way of erecting barriers between us and our food-- for the sake of a threat that seems to be theoretical in practice? It's not necessary for them to buy from local farmers, either.

Again, no one's against proper safety courses etc. But when a proper course seems to cost about $650 and the real world cost is 100 times that, isn't there something totally nuts about the latter? (Though not, of course, crazy if you're one of the well-connected "consultants" who make the Chicago world go round, I guess.)

But the bottom line is that the restaurant didn't go out and try to get the laws changed, or find a way to make things work, they decided to hope the inspectors would look the other way. And I'm not so sure how theoretical this danger is - one of the reasons botulism is so rare nowadays is because almost nobody's been canning at home since the early sixties - and restaurants just didn't do it at all until very recently.

But, most importantly, since you mentioned democracy earlier - this isn't a situation where customers know they're eating food that isn't prepared per health code standards. It's not like eating Fugu, where you're making a decision to do something potentially risky.

And I'm not so sure how theoretical this danger is - one of the reasons botulism is so rare nowadays is because almost nobody's been canning at home since the early sixties - and restaurants just didn't do it at all until very recently.

Then that's a ringing endorsement of our industrial food system, I guess.

C'mon, almost nobody? It may have become a niche interest but I'd still bet that niche has a couple of million housewives in it to some greater or lesser degree. The very fact that botulism remains rare indicates that the fear is consistently overblown and scaremongered-- including in this thread.

WSJ says "Canning Is Making a Comeback!"

WHO report on botulism

CSPI Report on the Riskiest Foods (pdf), led by Lettuce, The Silent Killer

I have a friend who works in Health and Safety on the east coast, and he says it's not at all a big deal out there to get a license, it's a 4 hour course. For the facility you have to prove that it can do what it needs to (heat to whatever the temp is, sterility, etc) but it is in no way a big deal there to get certified.

I'd like to see more data on what it takes to get a manufacturing license in Illinois than the Time Out article, which doesn't cite a source for the $15,000 consultant figure or discuss how many businesses have tried to become licensed with or without such expensive help. There are enough restaurants around town selling their own bottled sauces and such that I assume they have found a way to make them legally, either through licensing or outsourcing.

Mike G wrote:It may have become a niche interest but I'd still bet that niche has a couple of million housewives in it to some greater or lesser degree. The very fact that botulism remains rare indicates that the fear is consistently overblown and scaremongered-- including in this thread.

I doubt that even 2 million American housewives regularly do home canning of riskier types. Jams and jellies, sure. Tomatoes and peaches, perhaps. Maybe pickles.

But green beans and beets and other low-acid foods that require a pressure canner? Why would most consumers -- in these days of Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee -- bother with that, especially when freezing is so much easier and less risky and the results are usually tastier?

Home cooks haven't given up canning because of "scaremongering," they've given it up because it's hot, messy, tiresome work that has a high learning curve for good results, and which isn't necessary given other preserving methods and the ready availability of fresh foods year round.

From the data I have been able to find, it does seem as if the incidence of botulism has been steadily dropping over the past century. I attribute that to lower incidence of home canning and better government oversight.

American Journal of Epidemiology wrote:In 1899–1969, 659 outbreaks comprising 1, 696 cases with 959 fatalities were recorded.... In 89% of the outbreaks in which the vehicle of transmission was identified, home-preserved foods were responsible. Nearly 60% of the outbreaks were related to ingestion of contaminated vegetables, 25% to preserved fruit and fish products, and the rest to various causes. Since 1940, the overall incidence and case fatality ratio have decreased.

Mike G wrote:CSPI Report on the Riskiest Foods

You're not seriously citing CSPI, an organization whose goal is to make people afraid of all food? They've called for bans on soft drinks, Gulf oysters, food coloring, aspartame, natural sulfites, "functional foods" containing such ingredients as echinacea and ginkgo biloba and more. They have told consumers it's unsafe to consume Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, casual restaurant meals, salt, caffeine, beer, wine and coffee drinks. They first promoted trans fats as being healthier than natural animal and plant-derived shortenings and then called for a ban on them.

Weren't you the one railing against food nannies?

FDA Bad Bug Book wrote:Most of the 10 to 30 outbreaks that are reported annually in the United States are associated with inadequately processed, home-canned foods, but occasionally commercially produced foods have been involved in outbreaks. Sausages, meat products, canned vegetables and seafood products have been the most frequent vehicles for human botulism....

The incidence of the disease is low, but the mortality rate is high if not treated immediately and properly. There are generally between 10 to 30 outbreaks a year in the United States. Some cases of botulism may go undiagnosed because symptoms are transient or mild, or misdiagnosed as Guillain-Barre syndrome....

(I also came across a statistic that noted that the highest incidence of botulism in the U.S. is in Alaska, due to traditional, home-fermented foods. The CDC advise that it's safer to make your stinky fish heads the old-fashioned way in a grass-lined hole in the ground rather than try to update the process in a glass or plastic container.)

You're not seriously citing CSPI, an organization whose goal is to make people afraid of all food? They've called for bans on soft drinks, Gulf oysters, food coloring, aspartame, natural sulfites, "functional foods" containing such ingredients as echinacea and ginkgo biloba and more. They have told consumers it's unsafe to consume Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, casual restaurant meals, salt, caffeine, beer, wine and coffee drinks. They first promoted trans fats as being healthier than natural animal and plant-derived shortenings and then called for a ban on them.

Weren't you the one railing against food nannies?

Yes, and if you think about it for a moment, you might get my intentions in citing them here.

So you're implying that the World Health Organization is the same as CSPI?

Mhays wrote:So you're implying that the World Health Organization is the same as CSPI?

Respectfully, I don't think the WHO should necessarily have any bearing on the actions of local government or their agencies.

Michelle, you and I are simply having two wildly different discussions, one in which botulism in Chicago restaurants which can their own stuff is an immediate and present danger to our lives, as evidenced by statistics about the Inuit preserving fish heads in Alaska; and the other in which I'm questioning the logic and social value of a $65,000 approach to preventing botulism when a $650 approach, or something less onerous and rife with corruptibility, is probably equally effective and relevant to the actual, real world scope of a (potentially serious, but statistically quite minor) problem, and would not harm other laudable social goals such as encouraging the consumption of local produce.

Let's leave it at that.

Well, OK - but that's not what you were saying. You were saying that the Health Department should just butt out and let the restaurants can whatever they want, and I am pointing out via various statistics, that botulism is in point of fact a real issue, and is as rare as it is now largely because practices have changed.

I'm with Leah, I think there's probably a less expensive solution to the problem, but the expectation that the Health Department can turn on a dime without warning to address something new is a little unreasonable, and the representation of them as the bogeyman for holding someone to existing standards is equally so.

However, in terms of the way Health code is ignored by enforcement in some situations and enforced in others, I think that stinks.