Local food promoter hit by 'absurd' regulation

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Foodlink Waterloo is funded by Waterloo Region to encourage the public to buy locally grown food.

The Region also has a health unit which inspects food-selling establishments of various sorts. But now the two are at odds, with Winterbourne farmer Jesse Gingrich caught in the middle.

Recently, Gingrich opened a farm store, with an associated bakery. The health unit has authority to visit this "food premise" and told Gingrich he can't sell ungraded eggs from the farm store.

He moved the ungraded eggs to a cooler on the other side of the parking lot. But now he's been told there must also be a separate cash box. The money from those eggs can't go into the same till as sales from the farm store. Gingrich took the issue to Peter Katona, executive director of Foodlink Waterloo, who was upset.

The health unit says the provincial regulations are very specific: The provincial Health Protection and Promotion Act's Regulation 562 says that "no operator of a food premise shall store, handle, serve, process, prepare, display, distribute, transport offer for sale, or sell ungraded or Grade 'C' eggs."

"How is the food safety issue being compromised in any way by there being one cash till?" Katona asks. "It has nothing to do with public health."

Local food has the support of the local federation of agriculture, whose director, Mark Reusser, says that the matter "is at the point of being absurd."

Katona says that the case is "indicative of barriers facing small-scale producers." Adds Gingrich: "The egg board is fine with it and that's what really burns me."

Chris Komorowski, manager of inspectors, says the rules are "black and white" but keeping a separate cash box won't make food safer. BF