Excerpt of story by Dan Flynn, contributor for Food Safety News
Sue Wallis has Filthy Fingers into more than Butchered Horses
Number 15 on the 2010 top story list is: “Wyoming Holds Line on ‘Food Freedom’ for Cottage Foods“
Republican State Rep. Sue Wallis of Recluse, WY, is sometimes called “Slaughterhouse Sue” for helping to bring a slaughterhouse to the Cowboy State for processing horsemeat for human consumption.
Wallis is also known for digging into her causes, and for the last three years she has tried with some success for a “food freedom” approach to Wyoming’s food safety regulation.
What she wants is to exempt all “cottage foods,” or foods prepared in home kitchens, including potentially hazardous foods such as dairy products, canned foods, and sauces, from any regulations or regulatory oversight whatsoever.
When she failed the first time, Wallis scaled back by proposing to exempt only non-hazardous foods, including jams, cookies and bread, from regulation. Since July 1, 2009, that has allowed non-hazardous home-produced foods to be sold at roadside stands and farmer’s markets in Wyoming.
But food safety professionals in Wyoming have attempted to draw the line with that 2009 bill, opposing the rest of Rep. Wallis’ Food Freedom Bill.
The Wyoming Governor’s Council on Food Safety and local leaders like Robert E. Harrington, director of the Casper-Natrona County Health Department, have worked hard to educate lawmakers on food safety.
Wyoming food safety experts argue that licensing and inspection of cottage food businesses allows them to help owners prevent contamination by foodborne pathogens.
Wallis, however, says the “food inspection bureaucracy” has “gone overboard” and is “infringing on our constitutional rights to produce things and sell things and consume things and buy things that they have no justification for doing.”
Food safety survived in Wyoming in 2010, but the threat is not going away in the New Year. Willis will be back with Food Freedom.
And state Sen. Eli D. Bebout, R-Riverton, is going to be pushing the Traditional Community Events Act, which would exempt charitable and religious organizations from regulatory oversight when they stage potluck dinner or other food events.
Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, want to exempt raw milk producers and set up a “Cow Share” program.
“It appears that anyone who has an opposing viewpoint is ‘going overboard’ according to Rep. Wallis. Her self-elected lack of education drives her ignorance of contaminated food stuffs INCLUDING, but not limited to, human consumption of the drug tainted meat of American horses. Food Safety experts must be regarded as ‘extremists’ in her skewed mindset, also...and so the stupidity continues.” ~ R.T.
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