Dafna Kory first sold her homemade jalapeño jam at a clandestine farmers market in San Francisco. The jam was a hit and so was the Underground Farmers Market that brought it to consumers. But the market was shut down by the Department of Public Health because the sellers did not comply with city and state regulations.
Their crime? Most of the vendors produced their products in home kitchens.
See Emily Voigtlander’s piece for much more on this, but the question I always have about bans on commercial sale of home kitchen output is if these home kitchens are so unsafe then how is it that we’re allowed to use them at all? I eat food cooked in my own kitchen all the time, and even serve it to friends and family on a fairly regular basis. It seems like there should be some kind of standard as to what constitutes a safe facility to cook in, but if it’s safe it’s safe.
…I mean, the logic is very simple, even if I think it is stupid.
If you are cooking for yourself and your family you are likely to take greater care than if you are cooking for strangers who you may never see again and who will have difficulty identifying you as a source of infection if they do become ill subsequent to eating your food.
This one isn’t exactly rocket science.
Filed under: Economics, cooking at home, Regulation, the obvious, Yglesias
Unless you want to sell more of that food of course.