As Howard Fine reported in his Feb. 27 article “Not Loafing It,” Assemblyman Mike Gatto wants to make it legal for entrepreneurs to sell “safe” food items made in their homes rather than having to produce them in commercial kitchens.
The best illustration of why this is a well-intentioned but bad idea is the photo that accompanies the article. It shows the backyard oven in which would-be food entrepreneur Mark Stambler wants to bake bread for sale. The oven is wide open to birds, insects and rodents, all of which would be free to add ingredients not likely to appear on Stambler’s label.
Assemblyman Gatto calls Los Angeles County’s food safety laws Byzantine and unclear, and says they should not burden home-based businesses that make what he calls “safe” foods, such as breads, pastries and dried fruits.
After all, what could go wrong?
Not much, except serious illnesses or deaths. Oh yes, and exploitation of workers, and foods lacking safety and ingredient labeling. Plus, of course, no recourse for consumers who may be injured by these artisanal food products.
We are not living in Mayberry with Aunt Bee making cherry pies for the church raffle. These would-be food entrepreneurs want to sell to consumers who have come to expect – with justification – that the food products they are buying are sanitary, properly labeled and produced under reasonable working conditions.
The assemblyman believes baked goods and dried fruits carry little safety risk. But many pastries include cheese, jellies and sugary frostings that are ideal growing media for bacteria if the items are not properly refrigerated.
What happens if the artisanal baker decides to support other home-based enterprises, and uses cheeses and jellies made by a neighbor? A Mexican-style soft cheese that is a favorite of Hispanic do-it-yourselfers has caused outbreaks of listeriosis, resulting in premature births, brain abscesses and fetuses being stillborn.
Dried fruit, another of the assemblyman’s “safe” items, must be stored at the proper temperature and humidity or naturally occurring mold can produce aflatoxins that are poisonous and carcinogenic.
Food allergies
Let’s hope the artisanal chef doesn’t prepare that fruit on a board previously used to chop peanuts. About 3 million Americans have significant food allergies, and each year 150 die from them.
Even bread, certainly the least-risky item on the assemblyman’s list, needs to be produced, packaged and delivered with care. Aflatoxins from mold can grow on corn, wheat, nuts and other grains, and can be found in breads made with these ingredients. Typically, the only result is a mild fever. But breads can also be contaminated by bacteria, such as staph, if the baker or delivery person is infected.
Will Gatto’s bill require “cottage chefs” to carry liability insurance?
Consumers don’t see the rigorous steps commercial kitchens take to safeguard the purity of their products and the cleanliness of their production. These kitchens use stainless-steel appliances, work surfaces, utensils, mixing bowls and other items that can be easily and thoroughly cleaned.
Workers in commercial kitchens wash their hands thoroughly and often with germicidal soaps. They wear hairnets that cover their heads and, if they have beards or mustaches, facial nets as well. They are not allowed to work if they have a cold or other contagious illnesses.
These kitchens have high-capacity refrigeration systems that can quickly chill cooked foods to a safe holding temperature. The average home refrigerator won’t be up to the task for a busy artisanal chef.
Many commercial kitchens also have on-site microbiological labs that continually test the items produced to ensure that, if contamination does occur despite all the safety procedures, it is detected quickly and kept off store shelves.
If artisanal chefs cannot afford $100 or $200 a day to rent commercial kitchens, as the assemblyman believes, they are unlikely to bear the cost of having labs regularly test their output.
One final not-in-Mayberry concern: The assemblyman assumes that artisanal chefs will use responsibly the freedom from supervision the law would allow. But what about the less-ethical entrepreneurial “chef” who enlists two, or five or 12 low-income neighbors on his block or in his apartment building to do piece-work baking all day and into the evening in their home kitchens, perhaps with the help of young children? This kind of exploitation is hardly unknown in Los Angeles.
Cooking and baking can be wonderful avocations as Stambler’s enthusiasm demonstrates. But when a chef’s products leave the home and enter commerce, consumers have a right to expect that they are as healthy and safe as everything else on a store’s shelves.
Alexander Auerbach operates the Alexander Auerbach & Co. public relations firm in Sherman Oaks. He also serves as a director of an L.A.-area food manufacturer.
