Personal Injury Law

Ideas for safer food at churches?

By Bill Marler

I am in San Francisco today to visit with a client who is still suffering the devastating impact of an E. coli O157:H7 infection fifteen months after first becoming ill.  She still remains hospitalized - today in rehab, but a few days ago in was in ICU.

Checking my emails this morning, I found this one that I thought I would share with readers.  The person who wrote it will be checking back here for your thoughts.

Dear Mr. Marler & Associates,

Thank you for the work you do. I found your website as I am preparing to teach a food safety class to the church that I attend and am a member of. I have worked in the food service industry in a wide range of jobs from prep cook to executive chef and I've taught culinary arts to high school students. I am a certified ServSafe instructor. Currently I am a stay at home mom and personal chef and I am very involved in my church. We are growing and have close to 200 regular attenders. I am writing you because I want to know if you have any specific information that I should relay to the members of the church who prepare food.

The class is this Saturday and I will be preparing for it through this week. We have a lot of well intentioned people who have no idea what the safe food practices are. It is going to be the most
challenging class I've ever taught since most of those in attendance are much older than I am and have been handling food the same way for years.

I thank you for the video clips. I plan on showing a couple of them to relate the relevance of this issue. I also thank you for all of the information on your site.

Where we are, we aren't under the local food codes because churches are exempt. I would think that is not a good idea and there should be some tightening of that law to include "churches who serve food to more than 'x' guests are not exempt." Do you have experience with churches being sued? I explained to the board at our church that we can still be sued even though we don't have to follow the regulations.

Thank you for your time. I hope to hear from you soon.

Full post as published by Marler Blog on July 28, 2010 (boomark / email).