[REASON] Fort Worth Regulators Target Community Fridges Providing Free Food for People in Need

So if we solve the "staying cold" problem with the internet-connected temperature sensors, do you still have a problem with it?

But do I have the right to take on that risk? If I build a treehouse for my neighbor and it comes crashing down and hurts his kid, I could also be held liable. But we don't choose to regulate my ability to help someone there. There are endless things that we do in our daily lives that come with liability risk.

Except dumping expired food is still illegal. If they did that, we could sue them for malicious intent or file criminal charges and put them in jail. That's the deterrent there. That same individual could go hand out that expired/unsafe food to homeless people on the street now, and you said you'd have no problem with it as a health inspector.

The underlying question here is how much do you regular private individual activity from doing charitable things. I know these questions sound obnoxious and "gotcha"-ish, but that's not my intent - I'm trying to narrow down the exact thing we're attempting to regulate and protect from here.

 

The government has established a precedent for protecting against food risks.

Fort Worth does not have a starvation problem.

Its nice to be able to eat meat instead of beans and rice and pop tarts but that's all these refrigerators do. Provide more food options. That's not enough reason to ignore long established and most importantly, SUCCESSFUL precedent.

 

Again, what is the specific food safety risk you're trying to protect from?

Just because something is successful doesn't make it ideal or even appropriate. We could enact regulations that only government can give out food through charity. That would successfully keep people safe too - but it wouldn't be efficient or ideal.

The goal is to regulate the minimum amount necessary to successfully achieve the end goal objective. Everything else is over-regulation.

To this point, this may be an example that's more relatable that you brought up a while back:

https://bbs.clutchfans.net/threads/...estrictions-on-players-away-from-work.309316/

These leagues could successfully control the problem by massive regulation going all the way to a bubble. But the goal of the leagues is to figure out the minimum amount of regulation they need to do to keep their employees safe. Beyond that, we want to give the players as much freedom to live their normal lives as possible - anything else is overly restrictive and overly regulated. The bubble last summer worked extremely well - it was a successful regulation. But it wasn't an efficient or ideal one, so they are trying to ease it to figure out the right balance.

 

I've been in a couple of discussions here about hunger in America or from my perspective a lack thereof.

If you have kids and low income, you get plenty in food stamps. I do applaud this discussion for sticking to the realization that the people who are recipients of this food are mostly homeless and therefore adults. There certainly are homeless kids but for the most part we get homeless kids off the streets

 

Yes if they are willing to do that extra step along with monitoring that the fridges aren’t intereferred with then I would be ok with it. This gets into though what is practical. If people are willing to spend more money to make it work from health safety that is good but from the considering the opportunity cost perhaps that money could be used for more food. Like buying non perishable food.

People complain about how litigious our society except rules like this are there to try to cut down on litigiousness. This seems like a strange argument that I’m willing to take the risk but that goes then to a lot of things. I’m willing to take risk of not wearing seat belts, I’m willing to take risk of skiing in an avalanche prone area, I’m willing to take risk of drinking and diving, etc.. The pint about many of these isn’t just your own personal liability but the potential negative affects on others.

in this case whether your willing to risk it yourself besides you possibly getting sued for distributing food in an unsafe manner an outbreak of food poisoning will stress our medical system at a time when it’s already stressed.

Yes of course giving out expired food is illegal. That’s pretty obvious and if your counter argument is “aha! But you didn’t specifically say you wouldn’t allow someone to hand out expired food if they did it by hand” seems like an argument that would’ve already been addressed a priori in the situation of a health inspector. I mean I didn’t specifically say as health inspector i would allow someone to hand out poisoned food as long as it was done by hand either but I think you would recognize the absurdity of that claim.

Of course these are difficult questions with competing moral goods. In this particular situation I think it’s pretty simple.

Temperature control is critical to food safety. If we cannot guarantee food safety we risk a health outbreak at a time when our health system is already stressed.

If that concern can be addressed through food that won’t spoil easily or through remote sensing monitoring technology if I was a health inspector that would be fine with me. I would still question whether it’s worth it spend the money on technology rather than on buying more non perishable food.

 

In know there are programs like that around the country. I don’t know the details about the Oakland program and I’m not aware of one in Minnesota. I know there are ones that hand out unattended in Minneapolis but those are limited to non perishables.

If the Oakland program is doing so using standard consumer refrigerators and leaving them unattended and exposed to the elements I would say the health inspectors in Oakland aren’t doing their job. If they are being monitored with temperature control then I think that is ok.

 

If they have people monitoring them then I can see a health inspector allowing it but that would still require a pretty strict monitoring especially when the weather get's warmer. As I said earlier imagine leaving cottage cheese sitting in a metal box outside for a few hours.