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27 Responses to “Drew Carey Presents: Battle of the Bacon Dogs”
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I wonder if the manufacturer of the fancy cart has relatives working in the health dept.
Living in L.A. - generally speaking - sucks.
Bacon Dogs may make it easier to live here!
Damn - It is 8:15 AM here - & I am now starved for one.
How many people have gotten sick from eating bacon dogs?
“Well, that’s a nebulous number.”
Bureaucratspeak for:
“No one is actually keeping statistics on this. We just think bacon is bad for you.”
NO BACON! NO PEACE!
This type of law will almost surely give rise to “kickbacks” (not really the right word) to cops from vendors to look the other way.
This is easily the least persuasive of these videos that Drew Carrey has put out. Are the unlicensed vendors completely unpunished and unpoliced?
I mean, I think everyone agrees that there should be some oversight and regualtions on the food industry, so that rather than waiting until you get sick to realize you should not visit a place, you can eat with peace of mind that the restaurant is taking reasonable precautions to keep food healthy and sanitary. do these regulations go too far? Yes, but it’s a matter of degree, and I feel terrible fo rthis woman having to incur the expense of being prosecuted for an overly-protective law, but that argument is not as effective as her business being crippled for *following* the law in the first place. Which brings us back to the unlicensed vendors and how they are treated by the city, and as of now we have no information on that. Plus I think some consumers *would* go out of their way not to buy from a guy cooking on a tray on top of a grocery cart, and go to a licensed vendor with a large, well-quipped food-service cart. I know I would.
As an aside: can the folks at reason tv get rd of that terrivly lame music at the beginning and end? I feel like I’m back in middle school about to watch an anti-drug video in health class.
Really, it just goes to show that the licenses mean NOTHING. If the food was a hazard, or her cart was a hazard, or something she did was a hazard, she should not be licensed.
So, either she really is ok with her equipment.
Or, the licensing agencies are nothing more than money grabs.
From the video, none of the license stickers said “vendor not approved for bacon” ….
Color me unconvinced. Raw pork has to be handled properly to avoid contaminating other food (besides being stored within a specific temperature range to inhibit bacteria growth).
Even from my libertarian-leaning standpoint, it seems reasonable for a local health department to have certain standards that food vendors have to maintain when handling potentially unsafe food.
If I were the hot-dog vendor in the video, rather than fighting the health department, I’d eliminate the unfair competition by calling the police every time I saw one of those unlicensed guys selling bacon-dogs from those jury-rigged carts.
In the reason.tv video, one of the vendors seems very knowledgeable regarding her customers’ desires, viz., for bacon-wrapped hot dogs. So, if she wishes to succeed as a vendor, she needs to provide a safe and desirable product for a good price. The latter will attract lots of happy customers.
This is what really irks me about paternalistic bureaucrats like Powell, for they just seem to assume that government fiat will protect the masses, rather than reasonably safe and desirable products. After all, if enough people got sick from vendors’ products, the latter would quickly go out of business without any government intervention.
The problem is with this notion that the government is there to protect the public from these nasty businessmen. Wrong. Licensing should be certification, showing that the state has inspected and approves a vendor as being safe by some standard and competent.
Has anyone heard of the axiom “buyer beware”? We should be free to buy from any vendor we wish, state certified or not. The only criminal charges should be fraud concerning who they are and their state certifications.
On second thought, Certification of a food establishments should be done by private organizations as well. The government has no business in that either.
“Licensing should be certification, showing that the state has inspected and approves a vendor as being safe by some standard and competent.”
Good thing you had that second thought, because this form matches pretty well with what the health department is doing. They’ve set a standard for handling pork, they cite vendors whose equipment isn’t up to code, and don’t harass those who do.
I feel bad for the woman who can’t afford the equipment it’d take to get the city off her back, but I’m not persuaded that the health department is out of line. I gotta eat in this town, and while I don’t imagine the health department is perfect, I’ve got no faith at all in this hypothetical private health inspector corporation system. I can’t see why rating-shopping wouldn’t be as big a problem in food inspections as it is in bond rating. If you get to choose your inspector, and you pay his fee directly, he’s largely under your control and his credibility as an adversary–and the regulator-regulatee relationship is naturally and properly an aversarial one–is nil.
Since health inspectors operate for the benefit of the general public, it doesn’t seem improper that they be paid by the general public, that is, with tax dollars.
Bet that goes over real well in this room.
What if vendors that would currently be fined and/or shut down were instead only required to post a highly visible sign from the health department explaining that they are not officially “approved” by the health department to serve the food, and why not.
This would allow consumers to make an informed decision about the food they’re buying, but not be as intrusive as the current setup. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
As others here have said, this one is light-weight, to put it mildly. The problem isn’t that bacon-dogs are unsafe, and it’s severely twisting the problem to claim that. It’s that handling raw pork is *very* different than handling cold hot-dogs (which are already cooked before wrapped at the factory). The health department simply says that they need to have a three-compartment sink in order to properly clean their utensils and not cross-infect other food from the raw pork. Fair enough.
So the issue isn’t just that the bacon dog will make you sick, but rather that other food from the vendor may have that effect.
I feel bad for the lady in the video, but she should get an SBA loan to cover the cost of a new cart. Or scrap and save for one.
I’m a staunch libertarian, as anybody here would know by now. But health regulations are set up for a reason. Raw and undercooked pork, particularly, was known at least 4000 years ago to cause problems. Without looking up the scripture, simply put, pork isn’t kosher, nor can Muslims eat it for the same reasons. It’s not because God said “don’t eat pork”, but rather that people back then noticed that sometimes when they ate pork, really bad, deadly things happened, and they decided at some point it just wasn’t worth the risk.
If you want to live the fantasy that no health regulations are necessary, head to the Philippines and try the street vendors. Good food, but then, my wife contracted hepatitis from one of them as a teenager. That stuff is extremely rare here in the US.
As I said, this one was light-weight. Funny, entertaining, but not convincing.
If you don’t want to eat pork products from a vendor that lacks a “three compartment sink” - then don’t. You don’t need the government to simply refrain from eating food from such a place. If you’re concerned - ask. And if you don’t feel you can trust the answer - don’t eat there. I’ve eaten, and prepared, hundreds if not thousands of pounds of pork product prepared in kitchens with, alas, only a “one compartment” sink (every kitchen I’ve ever had). I’ve never gotten sick. I don’t fear getting sick. And if it’s a (minimal) “risk” I want to take, what right does some pointy-headed government busybody have to tell me otherwise?
I was telling someone in Indianapolis about this story last week. We both thought they sounded great, so we’re having a cookout this weekend featuring bacon dogs. Kosher dogs from shapiros wrapped in home farmed bacon. good AND a little sacrilegeous.
Thanks to over-policing it’s spreading…….
“If you don’t want to eat pork products from a vendor that lacks a “three compartment sink” - then don’t.”
I dunno. It hadn’t occurred to me that street vendors handling raw pork were dangerous until I saw this video, but in hindsight that makes a lot of sense. I don’t cook much, and I don’t know much about food. While in hindsight this thing about handling bacon is pretty obvious, it drives home to me the point that I really don’t have the expertise to assess a restaurant’s food handling techniques. I’m perfectly happy to see a few tax dollars spent to enlist professionals to make and enforce reasonable standards.
The problem with reasonable standards created by a bureaucracy is that they generally become oppressive almost immediately. Once a bureaucratic organization is created its main goals become expansion of its authority and self preservation and the purpose for which it was originally intended becomes a secondary concern.
If the government stops trying to regulate so much and acts swiftly to prevent fraud (e.g. the vendor lying about certifications or their identity), the free market will self regulate bad vendors out of business.
@Laertes,
There are plenty of certification organizations that are not administered by the government (e.g. Medical Boards, State Bar Associations) and they seem to function effectively. The only problem is the legal requirement to be certified. The government could easily police these organization to prevent them from committing a fraud as well.
I wonder if anyone told her about precooked bacon. If the problem is with raw bacon I’ll bet she could get a waiver for precooked bacon.
Might not be as good, its a little more expensive, but it comes vacuum packed and doesn’t require refrigeration until after its opened.
Wow, of all the stories for the non-libertarians to show up for …
Isn’t something like this blasphemy around here (as it should be):
“I’m perfectly happy to see a few tax dollars spent to enlist professionals to make and enforce reasonable standards.”
I don’t exactly see how anyone feels any ’safer’ when government officials are the ones monitoring things.
Oh and Radster, thanks for this story … my stomach’s been growling all day
“I’m perfectly happy to see a few tax dollars spent to enlist professionals to make and enforce reasonable standards.”
The problem with that, of course, is that “spending a few tax dollars” and “enforcing reasonable standards” are really euphemisms for “stealing other people’s hard earned money” and “coercively preventing people from making a living and freely contracting with other consenting parties” respectively. And any self-respecting libertarian should be opposed, on principle, to both. I don’t want, or need, you to take my money to enforce your food preparation preferences. You are perfectly capable of _enforcing them yourself for yourself_ by not eating at a place that fails to satisfy your personal requirements.
I go to a local farmers market every Wednesday. There was a vendor there that sold Bleenies (fried potato pancakes) and was there for 25 years. New rules said that they had to have hot and cold running water sinks, plus a third sink for disenfection. They did not so the health department shut them down. I ate there every wednesday for years and was always fine.
They then went after this guy selling philly style pretzels. They said he needed hot and cold running water. He got that. New rules this year say he has to keep his mustard cold. MUSTARD!!
These Dept. of Health assholes are annoying civil servants who have no clue about anything.
One more thing for people who say we need an FDA or the “food police”. What about Underwriters Laboratory. They are a independent non government agency that is reliable and checks for safe electrical standards.
Whey can’t we have these sort of things for food and hygeine.
If the dog came stuffed with cheese they would be unstopable. and the waist lines in LA would explode. Good think i live in Germany, and we can get any wurst you want covered in bacon and cheese, it is soo damn good.
All food spoils. All raw meat spoils. Any raw anything can have bacteria. Remember the spinach that had E. coli? Do we have to have multiple sinks for vegetables?
It has nothing, nothing, NOTHING to do with sanitation, and everything to do with the distain for animal products by the elite few.
Smoked bacon if undercooked may infect with trichinosis, but that has nothing, nothing, NOTHING to do with sinks and everything to do with th emeat temperature and inspection.
All foods can have bacteria or parasites. It isn’t limited to a select “dirty” animal, cloven hoof or not.
Bacon dog. mmmm
This sounds awesome. Most of the time, i eat my hot dogs this way.Little bacon, dog and mustard is all you need. tastes awesome with kielbasa too.
Look out! It’s the attack of the Food Natzees!The woman’s situation is so messed up. She’s trying her hardest to make a living. She sells dogs. that’s what she does. But to jail her and take her to court over something that it appears that nobody got sick from? How DARE they treat this woman like a common criminal.
Forgive me, but for the Govt to say that it’s ok to handle dogs, but not bacon seems a little suspect. Not only that, they’re persecuting these people instead of working with them to help them subsidize the cost of these expensive carts.
I imagine it’d be effective to just pre-wrap the dogs before opening for business, handle the raw ones with plastic gloves, and take the gloves off when removing cooked ones. Why that isn’t legally sufficient, I dunno…
What gets me about these kinds of things is how far off the regulations are from how people cook in their own homes. Sure, there’s logic in the argument that for feeding the public there’s a higher standard, that’s obvious, but who the hell has a 3 compartment, specific use sink in their house? If the standard established is such that the average person couldn’t replicate it if they wanted to, then to me it says it’s not based in reality.
I suspect a large part of the reason many of the larger stands exist anyway is inflated costs of setting up shop in a building. The woman that talked to Drew made enough from the cart to get a house, I don’t claim to be a mind reader but that kind of success normally encourages thoughts of expansion, no?