It's not about not meeting the standards of the town's health department, it's about having a 1-size-fits-all health standards.

If you make a 5-seat japaneese-style neighborhood micro-eatery conform to the same cross-contamination standards as a 800-people-per-hour mcdonalds, you're making one of these unprofitable and de-facto illegal.

Yes, lets have health codes. But lets also recognize different risk profiles and encourage all sorts of entrepreneurship. If it's 1-size-fits-all, then the only size is going to be XXL.

Can you be more specific on exactly what kind of cross-contamination standards make it impossible for a small eatery to exist? Do you have any specific rules in mind?

Its been a while since I went through a food safety course, but I don't really recall any that would make it impossible for a small shop to achieve. I follow most of the rules I learned in my own kitchen at home. Stuff like don't use the same cutting board and knife between meat and veggies without cleaning in between, don't wear jewelry while prepping, keep things in safe time/temperature constraints, etc.

Cross contamination standards can't make it impossible for a small eatery to exist, and without standards enforcement businesses will absolutely go full The Jungle. Unfortunately, I could believe that paperwork around cross contamination standards could get there- a chain can spread the cost of the laywering to get paperwork right over hundreds of establishments, and learn it progressively as it gets worse, a single establishment has to do all the paperwork themselves up front.

It's not about cutting boards or temperature constraints. Yes, that applies at any scale. It's the stuff that legally mandates a minimum-size operation. Article talks about it:

> Relatedly, our health code regulations also effectively outlaw people from opening restaurants in small spaces. Most jurisdictions require at least 3-4 different sinks—one for washing dishes (usually a large three-part sink), separate ones for washing hands, one for mopping, and often another for prepping food. This makes small commercial kitchens in under 200 square feet much harder.

> America’s food regulations are also not set up for a single person to manage. The U.S. has 3,000 different agencies handling food regulations. The whole system, scattered across eight places in the municipal code, is basically uncoordinated and varies depending on where you are.

Meatpacking has the same issue. FDA regulations are designed for industrial-scale chicken, beef, and pig processing. And if you're processing hundreds or thousands of heads a day, it's absolutely needed. But what if you have just a few heads? What if you have a small flock you want to sell to your neighbors? A 1000-head-per-delivery processing plant won't even answer your call, and you even if they did you have zero negotiating power, so your only options are to go big or not be able to legally sell it.

A lot of people have amish or menonite communities that are able to process your livestock legally, but even those are disappearing. So small farmers have no way to legally get their product to market, and so they're being gobbled up by the large industrial farms.

The regulations use safety pearl-clutching to force a specific outcome that benefits a specific group, and it's not the small family farmer the commercials idolize.

Nixon's secretary of ag said it explicitly: get big or get out.

I dunno I personally don't think its a huge ask to not use the same sink to clean the mop as the sink where they do the dishes but I guess some people don't mind mixing the usage.

I don't even mix my mop/cleaning sink (usually my tub at home) with my food prep, and my hand washing sink is separate from my kitchen sink when I'm actually in cooking mode. Even food trucks around me manage to meet these requirements.

If we're using the most extreme examples to distract using visceral disgust instead of addressing the core point of one-size-fits-all regulations tend to kick out the bottom rung of the economic opportunity ladder, might I offer a small $5 solution? Buy a mop bucket.

> If we're using the most extreme examples to distract using visceral disgust instead of addressing the core point

I am absolutely addressing a core point, that's a big part of what you previously quoted about being unable to meet health safety requirements. I didn't bring up that example, you and the previous author did. Its quite combative to act like I'm just pulling out some extreme example, when you're the one who provided the example as a regulation strangling businesses, and was the only example given.

You said cross contamination standards make such places impossible. I asked for concrete cross contamination examples that make it impossible, and the only one you've given me so far is sinks. So I'm sorry I'm only really talking sinks here, that's all I have to work with here. Other than the vagueness of the fact there's a lot of tiny jurisdictions, but that doesn't really matter given we're talking about hyper local hole-in-the-wall places. They really only care about whatever their specific local regulations are, which are usually pretty easy to go figure out.

>> Most jurisdictions require at least 3-4 different sinks—one for washing dishes (usually a large three-part sink), separate ones for washing hands, one for mopping, and often another for prepping food

Just having the mop bucket doesn't solve the problem. You take that mop bucket, and dump it where? Where do you go clean the bucket and the mop after you dump it? Where do you go to get water for the mop bucket?

What do these super tiny restaurants that are supposedly impossible to have in the US do to actually clean their dishes? What do they do to properly clean hands after handling unclean meats to prevent cross contamination? What do they do to clean the things they use to clean the facility? Do they have people with unclean hands covered in potential salmonella in the same sink they're doing dishes in? Or the sink where they cleaned the mop bucket an hour ago in? Which sink gets the axe?

You're telling me we need to get rid of these sink requirements (its the only thing you've concretely pointed to), but offering no suggestions other than "buy a mop bucket", which doesn't solve the problem at all.

You've also pointed to the idea that overregulation is what is killing small meatpackers, but once again give no concrete examples of what regulations you'd drop. I do agree there has been too much consolidation in the meatpacking industry and that smaller producers have been squeezed out. I agree this is probably a bad thing overall and we should do something to change this path we're on. I'm not 100% sure its safe to lay a large chunk of that blame on overregulation. If anything, some of the reduction of regulations have made the burden higher, such as reduction in USDA inspectors with the requirement that the meatpacker hire their own inspectors. The inspection still needs to be done, but now its the meatpacker that needs to train the inspector and pay the payroll for that person. So please, can you share some concrete examples of the regulations which should be removed for meatpacking as well?

Well that's luck for you, because I built the house I live in, and I'm not selling it. Although since I actually have to live in the house, the wiring was designed by an electrical engineer and installed at or above NEC requirements. But there was no one to look over my shoulder when I did it.

If there were regulations house would have cost at least double. Because I have a day job and no time for inspectors, nor any trade license.

>Imagine buying a meal from a restaurant which prides themselves by not meeting the standards of the nearby town's health department.

Lol having lived in the third world I've eaten from probably a hundred of these. Very tasty. Not much different than the US where inspector is basically never there so you still must apply all the food sanitation rules in deciding regarding buying food from a vendor.

People who conflate "not actively regulated and inspected with government permission being given before stuff even happens" with "sub par" as if that's not reductive at best is exactly how we got here.

Most people don't make a point to go out of their way to avoid having rules applied if they're intending on following the rules. I don't think its that big of a leap.

You're also misreading my comment. I'm not saying they definitely will do a sub-par job, but that its now an option, that they can do it. And given its the cheaper option (up front at least), it probably will happen more often. And especially when it comes to stuff like wiring, where once the walls are all sealed it can be expensive to inspect later, and yet if done improperly may kill your family and destroy most of what you own.

Just like that restaurant I give as an example, its not necessary they definitely will ignore food safety rules, but they sure make an effort and pride them selves to the ability to ignore them whenever they want.

Once again this is a take predicated on bad assumptions.

If you're just doing something and intend to meet or exceed the rules then dealing with government enforcement apparatus is pure overhead. You were always gonna do the right thing so you gain zero upside and have to deal with a potentially capricious and unaccountable (in any practical way) enforcer which is a huge downside.

Second, the rules are chock full of 10,000ft ivory tower view type stuff that makes statistical sense but is inefficient compared to using judgment. But you can't use judgement because the whole point of code is to make everything quantitative so that idiots can inspect other idiots and parties can more efficiently bicker in court and whatnot.

> you gain zero upside

There's a lot of upside to the fact the next owner isn't going to have to question if things were done properly, that insurance isn't going to be able to push back when something does go wrong.