Woman facing jail for selling ceviche through Facebook group is overreacting, says prosecutor

[davislane1]

Well, the law isn't "moronic", is has a strong foundation in necessity.

I agree it has a strong foundation in necessity. But "necessity" does not implicitly imply sensibility or even rationality in application.

If you are a food cart serving hundreds or thousands of people each week, you should be subject to regulation because of the volume of people you are serving. If you are operating the equivalent of a lemon aid stand, you should not. If the law encompasses the latter, it is stupid because it creates regulatory burden and liability grossly disproportionate to potential impact.

This Facebook group consisted of 15,000 people individually selling less food than your average food cart. If they had simply done so without charge, like literal millions of people already do, the FBI never gets involved. It's not a "public health" concern. Add money, and suddenly, POOF, we gotta protect people from contaminated food.

It's like alcohol licensing. I can brew my own drinks and have everyone in the neighborhood come over and drink it at a BBQ. I can even invite local law enforcement. But if I give a bottle to my father for $5, we all have to get in the back of a police vehicle.

The spirit of the law (no pun intended) is what people should be concerned about. What we have here is legalism.

 

[captaincranky]

I agree it has a strong foundation in necessity. But "necessity" does not implicitly imply sensibility or even rationality in application.

If you are a food cart serving hundreds or thousands of people each week, you should be subject to regulation because of the volume of people you are serving. If you are operating the equivalent of a lemon aid stand, you should not. If the law encompasses the latter, it is stupid because it creates regulatory burden and liability grossly disproportionate to potential impact.

Whether or not this could be labeled a "test case", is subject to different interpretations. But that fact remains, food sold on Facebook can very well be classified as "interstate commerce". Which would involve regulation by several government agencies. The FBI being merely, "the cops who got called".

This Facebook group consisted of 15,000 people individually selling less food than your average food cart. If they had simply done so without charge, like literal millions of people already do, the FBI never gets involved. It's not a "public health" concern. Add money, and suddenly, POOF, we gotta protect people from contaminated food.

The number of people served is completely irrelevant. Food recalls are based on the number of people sickened, not the number of people who ingested said tainted product!

With today's insistence on "personal liberties", those who consume the product are every bit as entitled to the same, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", as those who prepared it.

So, with individual freedom from potential harm being involved, it shouldn't matter if you kill only one person with tainted product, the penalty is the same as if you killed a hundred. I will grant you that the executives of a large company aren't likely to face individual prosecution for a tainted food incident, but the Fed will fine the sh!t out of the corporation responsible. (pun intended).

It's like alcohol licensing. I can brew my own drinks and have everyone in the neighborhood come over and drink it at a BBQ. I can even invite local law enforcement. But if I give a bottle to my father for $5, we all have to get in the back of a police vehicle(*).

Might I suggest you know the neighbors you invite over for free drink as well as you possibly can. Since you very well could find yourself wrapped up in civil litigation, from the one major a**hole on the block, who didn't appreciate the green been you gave him. (accidentally, of course).

The spirit of the law (no pun intended) is what people should be concerned about. What we have here is legalism.

I honestly don't think you can attach the concept of, "acceptable losses", to food safety.

(*) Silly example. Do you think your dad would rat on you, if you hit him up a nickel for the bottle?

 

[davislane1]

The number of people served is completely irrelevant. Food recalls are based on the number of people sickened, not the number of people who ingested said tainted product!

The number of people served is inextricably tied to the number of people sickened in a food recall. If I serve bad food to five million people with a poisoning rate of 5%, the impact is 250,000 poisonings. If I serve that same batch of contaminated food at the 5% poisoning rate to five people, the likely impact is less than 1 with a maximum possibility of 5.

The inarguable mathematical difference between commercial business and private exchange is why we have regulations. High volume exchange has significant economic implications. Extremely low volume exchange typically does not.*

Insofar as interstate commerce is concerned... you are correct. This is another one of the violations I assume this group was guilty of. But I am fully confident you will be utterly and completely shocked by my view of that regulation as also being in desperate need of "destupifying."

I honestly don't think you can attach the concept of, "acceptable losses", to food safety.

(*) Silly example. Do you think your dad would rat on you, if you hit him up a nickel for the bottle?

Concerning the first: My risk profile is different. This is why we seem to universally oppose one another on regulation (but you already knew this).

Concerning the second: He would be surprised I took the time to brew alcohol. We'll assume the transaction takes place in public view.

*The exception obviously being big ticket items like real estate or, if you're in the hood, televisions.

 

[captaincranky]

The number of people served is inextricably tied to the number of people sickened in a food recall. If I serve bad food to five million people with a poisoning rate of 5%, the impact is 250,000 poisonings. If I serve that same batch of contaminated food at the 5% poisoning rate to five people, the likely impact is less than 1 with a maximum possibility of 5.

You'll have to admit, the "sickened to healthy ratio" of an incident, becomes completely moot once a single a fatality is involved.

The inarguable mathematical difference between commercial business and private exchange is why we have regulations. High volume exchange has significant economic implications. Extremely low volume exchange typically does not.*

Perhaps true but, at a certain point a "test case" needs to be brought, before the situation goes completely out of control.

Face it, the people involved might have the best of intentions, and have kitchen facilities too clean to be in "Better Hones and Gardens". Still, the next group or groups, may not live up to the same cleanliness and health standards. Better the unfortunate "pioneers", are made aware of the ramifications, rather than let the unscrupulous take the lack of oversight for granted.

Insofar as interstate commerce is concerned... you are correct. This is another one of the violations I assume this group was guilty of. But I am fully confident you will be utterly and completely shocked by my view of that regulation as also being in desperate need of "destupifying."

Well, I'll agree that selling licenses is a "business" undertaken by governments, and that's about as far as I go. Hidden taxes, and/or a necessity to fund government and/or a protection for the individual born out of said fees, is sort of a very murky point, both inconclusive and unwinnable no matter which side you may take.

Concerning the second: He would be surprised I took the time to brew alcohol. We'll assume the transaction takes place in public view.

Be reasonable, you gave dad a bottle and he lent you five bucks. Now if you're cooking "moonshine" for sale to the townsfolk, you might legitimately expect "the Untouchables" to come busting through the door of your garage, axes in hand...

*The exception obviously being big ticket items like real estate or, if you're in the hood, televisions.

Well, the junkie who just handed you the TV for a few bags of heroine, isn't going to write you a bill of sale. That's pretty much a given. But assuming you didn't by the TV from an interstate venue, it wouldn't be under federal jurisdiction anyway.

 

[davislane1]

You'll have to admit, the "sickened to healthy ratio" of an incident, becomes completely moot once a single a fatality is involved.

For the fatality and to a lesser extent his or her relatives, not for the general public. This is why the math is of indubitable relevance to the question of regulation. Regulation is about protecting the welfare of the general public, not private individuals.

If I bake 100 cookies once a month and give them away to coworkers twelve times a year, is it a public health concern? My kitchen does not meet FDA commercial standards. Even if I applied for the appropriate licensing, I would be rejected on this basis. Yet, I can do so freely, even if a batch makes someone sick (though, people would probably not want my cookies after that).

If I bake 100 cookies once a month and give them away to coworkers twelve times a year, charging them $1 per cookie, is it a public health concern? My kitchen does not meet FDA commercial standards. Even if I applied for the appropriate licensing, I would be rejected on this basis. Consequently, because I would be making $1,200 per year doing this, I am in violation of the law and subject to a fine or imprisonment.

This is a nonsensical and arbitrary application of regulation. Quite literally nothing changes other than the exchange of a single dollar (per cookie). Unless someone can tell me how making an exchange magically transforms a food product from "irrelevant" to "public health risk," I fail to see how this is anything other than regulation being applied demonstrably beyond its intended scope.

Moreover, if the mere act of preparing food in a non-compliant kitchen is a risk to public health, there is, by definition, no justifiable reason on earth to not fine women who bake cakes for children's birthday parties or cite homeowners for the illegal operation of restaurants if they regularly cook dinner for neighbors. Does a neighborhood BBQ need to be FDA compliant?

This, however, would be completely absurd. Yet, it is the standard being applied to this Facebook group.

If some of these people were selling hundreds of units of food per month to hundreds of people, whoever meets this threshold should be ordered to cease and desist until they are compliant because their volume is sufficient to be of public concern. I strongly doubt this is the case, though. If any of these people had been distributing food at that level the FBI wouldn't have had to embed agents, on account of "Billy" having shipped off 50 boxes of macaroni salad to different addresses every Monday for the past six months being more than sufficient to indicate participation in something a smidge bigger than a cooking club.

This was a private group engaging in private transactions with willing participants, not an illicit commercial enterprise trying to masquerade as a licensed business.

The law defies logic. Therefore, it is retarded.