I am all for market stalls where small traders can sell their wares which they have manufactured at home directly to the public with no middle man therefore giving them a maximum profit on their product. With food and drinks items I am always looking to try the samples, admire the names or logos, read the labels and chat to the producers how they made their stuff and any ambitions they may have to grow the business in the future.
I am amazed however when sometimes the people behind the stand are selling certain things that need a little bit more care and compliance in order for them to be safe to consume by members of the public who are going to presume that everything is above board when they buy them. I chatted to one person a while back happily peddling little tubs of homemade pate made from a long standing family recipe which had never made anyone ill for as long as he could remember. Luckily it was a freezing cold day but if it was summer then all bets are off. I politely declined an invitation to sample it.
Something like pate is at the very sky high end of the risky food charts and you would have to jump through the maximum amount of hoops to get permission to make it before even thinking about selling it and this person had not done any food safety training or even had a local environmental health authority examine it or lab test it which is also necessary. There was not even a label.
The word listeria did not ring any bells. I diplomatically enlightened him that he may well be hauled away if a health officer happened to check out the stall. There were times when anyone could rock up to a market with their wares but these days’ city officers are arresting and fining kids in the States for selling lemonade at their garden gates to raise money for a school project or outing. Lemonade might seem harmless but if the water is not from a safe source, fruit not washed or the bottles not sterilized then all sorts of things can go wrong. They are actually meant to have a business license now to sell any food or drink no matter what the age or cause and both the kids and their parents are open to civil as well as state prosecution.
The days of simply making cookies to sell on your lawn which may have an ingredient that causes a severe or fatal allergic reaction are over, as the modern compensation culture plaintiffs will have the lawyers on you before you can say next customer please. The smarter American kids have got around it by giving their homemade ice lollies, pizzas, popcorn or toffee apples away for free and then requesting a donation chucked into the shoebox on the side. Not sure the lawyers will buy that one, literally.
I will get the odd call from someone wanting to make the likes of say jam, soda bread or apple tarts in their home kitchen and wanting to sell them at a fair or market but sadly it’s just not permitted anymore once money comes into the equation. You may as well be a large food manufacturing business as the same food law applies to the little trader as much as the big one.
Believe it or not plenty can go wrong if these products are made badly so you are wide open to being sued. The same goes when talented baker Aunty Mary insists on making the wedding cake to be served to guests at her darling nieces wedding then the venue must have a disclaimer that if anything goes wrong after it is consumed and its proven so then its poor Aunty Mary who will be in deep doggy doo and not the wedding venue when everything hits the fan, so to speak. Food safety law is there to protect both the seller and buyer so if rules were not in place then you can imagine the repercussions if the rogue traders took over.
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