The Lowest Common Denominator
6 Comments Published April 28th, 2010 in Color Country Information, Southern Utah Talking Points and Questions.Instead of calling ourselves Homo Sapiens – “thinking man” -
we should call ourselves Homo Canonicalis – “regulated man”.
One of the really nice things that we have been able to enjoy in Springdale is the Farmers Market that has been held on Saturdays for the last few years. In addition to fresh, wholesome fruits and vegetables, a few entrepreneurs have been selling some delicious snacks like brownies, little cakes, and jam and jelly.
It seems those delightful days are over. The damn government regulators have stepped in and put a stop to it.
During the winter, while the market was closed, meetings have been held and stern warnings have been delivered. The Farmers Market won’t be nearly as much fun from now on. Here’s a brief summary of Utah’s “Rule R70-560. Inspection and Regulation of Cottage Food Production Operations.”
“We got more rules to trip you up than you can ever possibly follow. Don’t even try.”
Making a few cakes in your home kitchen for sale just isn’t possible. You basically have to dedicate your home if you want to sell a brownie legally in Utah. You can’t use flour or nutmeg from your kitchen cabinet, or yeast from your refrigerator.
“R70-560-4(d): A cottage food production operation shall: Provide separate storage from domestic storage, including refrigerated storage”
You have to register with the State, pay a fee, have your kitchen inspected, submit all recipies for approval by the State, display the registration certificate whenever you sell anything, keep labeled samples of anything you sell for two weeks after you sell it … just the regulations telling you how you have to print labels goes on for two pages.
You can’t even have a dog or cat in the house, let alone in the kitchen.
And then there is Title 4 of the Utah Agricultural Code, Chapter 5 Utah Wholesome Food Act, Section 9.5 Cottage food production operations. I’m not sure why we need both a law and Rule R70-560, but we have both anyway.
In my darker moods, it seems that the only purpose served by all these rules is to protect WalMart and Albertsons from competition. If a brownie is sold anywhere, they want to sell it. So their lobbyists “assist” our legislators by helping them write laws that make it impossible for my neighbor to sell that brownie. After all, it seem to me that when people really are harmed by unsafe food, it’s the big guys that are at fault. They have a scale of operation that can afford to “appear” to follow all these rules while at the same time spending as little money as possible actually producing safe foods. I know whereof I speak. My wife used to be a lab worker charged with testing foods for the State of Utah. They never actually enforced the rules. It was mainly busy work just for show. Businesses had the political power to protect themselves.
An “unintended consequence” of this overregulation is that a lot of this cottage industry just gets driven underground. That means that there is no regulation at all, no collection of sales tax, and open, public, enjoyable activities like the Farmers Market can’t exist.
In other blogs, I have mentioned that I serve on the Springdale Planning Commission. I understand why we have ordinances that are often painfully similar. I used to argue with the professionals that Springdale hires to help us apply these ordinances by asking why it was wrong to simply use good judgment instead of endless regulation. The answer is that the concept of trusting people to actually use good judgment just isn’t part of our system of government. The problem is that if there is a loophole anywhere, somebody will crawl through it. So, on the Planning Commission, we probably spend more than half of our time just rewriting the ordinances to make them more and more detailed and exact. In other words, the same kind of rules that are taking all of the joy out of the Springdale Farmers Market.
The net result is that we’re all being reduced to the lowest common denominator. If anybody gets hurt doing something, the answer is that nobody will be allowed to do it anymore. If some sleezeball anywhere is grinding up nuclear waste and selling it as brownies, then the answer is that everybody, everywhere has have every brownie tested to make sure there’s no nuclear waste in it.
I’m not sure what the answer should be, but it sure would be nice to be able to buy a brownie from my neighbor’s kitchen at the Farmers Market.
I recently moved into a new neighborhood and was delighted when my neighbors came at various times with a plate of homebakede cookies to say welcome.
Don’t tell anyone or we may find ourselves shouting our welcome from across the street. Lena
You’re safe unless Walmart and Albertsons decide that they want to give away all the cookies as well as selling them. Somehow, I don’t think that will happen.
There are street vendors in downtown Ogden, people from Mexico who sell tacos, etc. I’ve spoken with them and they have to borrow (at a cost to them) a restaurant kitchen to make their products. I’m surpised the people running the booths in downtown Ogden are able to comply with all of the regulations and hoops you listed, because most if not all of them can’t speak English well!
There also is a very successful and well-attended Farmers Market held each summer weekend in Ogden, but I’ve only attended once. I’m going to try to get up there this summer. If I think of it, I’ll see if there are any “booths” selling brownies, cakes, jams/jellies, and if there are, I’m going to ask them how they manage to comply with all of the regulations. (And, to that end, I’m printing this blog to take with me then.)
The situation you described at your Farmers Market is very sad, Dan.
I’m not surprised.
One more problem of having w-a-a-a-a-y too many rules is that enforcement is very uneven and usually unfair. In our case, there is a live-wire organizer who goes out of her way to investigate everything. She discovered how out-of-compliance we were and went all the way to Cedar City to dig up the regulators. They didn’t come to us. In all probability, we could have skated for years. But she has now published all the regs to anyone who has any involvement so “plausible denial” is clearly out of the question.
Being a really, really good citizen is it’s own punishment, it seems. Especially in”the different world of Utah”.
Dan,
You document a truly sorry situation. I think an analogous situation is the U.S. tax code. How did it get to be so damn big and complicated? Most likely the way you have described for the food regulations: “So their lobbyists “assist” our legislators by helping them write laws that make it impossible . . .” except in the case of the tax code it is the lobbyists AND the “special interests” (are they the same or different?) who manage to get their loop-holes written in.
There is a fine line between too much regulation and too little, it is the art of government to find it.
Lobbyists and “special interests” are on the same team. “Special interests” generally describe whoever pays the lobbyist.
In the case of our ordinances, we do our dead level best to enforce each and every one we have across the board. Since I have been on the Commission, I know of half a dozen cases where the Town of Springdale was forced to do their own internal construction projects in accordance with the ordinances.
For example …
Springdale wanted to construct a segment of a bike trail. They had to build a retaining wall for part of it. The ordinance specifies how walls have to be finished. So EVEN THOUGH NOBODY except the one family who lives below the wall will ever be able to see the wall (it’s below a road and out of sight), Springdale paid about twice as much to build that wall with a nice, naturalistic finish.
We eat our own dog food.