General News GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the toilet

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

That's fuckin' awesome. This guy deserves a gold star.

Let the market decide (in a true free market, with no information asymmetry). Force restaurants (that are for "freedom") to only post a sign at the entrances in bold lettering that says:

"OUR EMPLOYEES ARE NOT REQUIRED TO WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER USING THE BATHROOM."

Let's see how restaurants fare. They'll be begging to surrender their "freedom."

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

That's exactly what he proposed.

Which is a whole new world of stupidity itself: at the very best requiring someone to post signs and deciding who exactly qualifies to not to post them is exactly the same regulation done by exactly the same people for exactly the same money, but now with 20% more deaths. At worst it's basically back to Upton Sinclair's days...

---------- Post added 4th Feb 2015 at 06:08 PM ----------

... Which is a big part of my complete disappointment with modern libertarianism, come to think of it: it doesn't really oppose neither regulation nor taxes, it just renames them, privatizes them, or "libertywashes" them through some other piece of Kabuki thea... err... sorry "machinery of freedom" and calls it a day.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

It's people like this who have raised freedom to a mindless fetish.

Here is a paragraph that is pertinent, from Wendell Berry's Life is a Miracle which is about our modern superstitions:

In Ummayad Spain, an enlightened society, responsible for many cultural and scientific advancements (711 to 1212), Muslim rulers took on the role of ensuring the integrity of weights and measures. This facilitated trade and built trust between buyers and merchants.

As in Spain so long ago, there is a role for government; it has always been so. Raging individualism as espoused by these idiots fail to understand that in addition to freedoms, we have responsibilities.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

Ugh! And here I thought that the anti-vaxxers were crazy!

:bang:

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

well that's the problem with this, what is obligating the restaurant to put a sign up at all? What, if they don't there will be a third party agency that will come in and make them put up a sign or fine them? sounds an awful lot like regulation to me.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

I'm currently working on an antidote that fights a toxin that certain strains of E. coli produce. It's been called "hamburger disease" in the vernacular and although it is rare, it affects kids and the elderly primarily, and does its damage to either the kidneys or the brain. It is a very serious and sometimes fatal disease.

It's quite simple, really. People who serve food have a responsibility to keep it safe. Regulators have required restaurants to do this in scientifically proven ways (hand-washing), it's a matter of public health.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

Oh man, I still can't believe this guy beat Kay Hagan... This may be one of the dumber things he's said, and that's saying something.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

I did read that that was what he proposed. I find it brilliant only because "business-friendly" politicians are sometimes all for obfuscating or not requiring labels on consumer products because it can be a burden on "business."

I don't think we would go back to the early 1900s. This is because we have a more educated consumer population that knows washing hands is essential for health, at least I hope. People will end up voting with their dollars and those restaurants that publicly state their employees don't wash hands will end up losing a lot of money and find it financially sound to require hand washing.

As for the hand washing sign rules and regulatory nature of who gets to put the sign, it's simple. Do you want to abide by county/state safe food handling regulations with regards to hand washing? No? Then, you get a sign. Of course, to make it even sweeter, there will be the two signs business would place:

"No Hand Washing" sign

"OUR EMPLOYEES ARE NOT REQUIRED TO WASH THEIR HANDS AFTER USING THE BATHROOM

LACK OF HAND WASHING INCREASES YOUR RISK OF ILLNESS, ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE CERTAIN MEDICAL CONDITIONS.

"Establishment that follows county/state protocols" sign

"THIS ESTABLISHMENT FOLLOWS ALL SAFE FOOD HANDLING PROTOCOLS ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE AND COUNTY. THIS IS DONE WITH YOUR HEALTH AND SAFETY IN MIND."

INSERT HUGE GREEN CHECK MARK"

:lol:

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

Ok... and the E. Coli epidemic will spread. Thank God I work EVS in health care. And if I even hope to open my own business... employees better wash their damn hands.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

This has all gotten out of hand.












LOL!

I'll get the blindfold -- you get the firing squad. I already know, I should be shot for that one.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

Those regulations don't write themselves. Nor checking if they're indeed followed as simple a matter as it might seem.

As for 1906 vs. 2015... Remember, Sinclair was out-and-out communist. As in, member of real communist organizations and Marxist agitator. And yet those benighted Gilded Age-era legislators established FDA more or less because of his book, and against several powerful lobbies and lots of liberty-talk. Can you honestly imagine anything even remotely similar happening today? Anywhere?

"Educated consumer" of today if told, say, all the detailed rules on properly handling raw meat developed since then would as likely as not bloviate about how they never do that for backyard BBQs and nothing happens and so these regulations MUST be useless bureaucratic pedantry. (Instead of thinking about how his kitchen isn't a pipeline with lots of food in different stages of cooking in it at every single moment, which pretty much any restaurant kitchen or food factory is.)

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

This is the same logic as anti-vaccine people hold.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

I understand that. In fact, The Jungle was written to show how the working poor lived in harsh conditions and the whole "meatpacking scandal" was an aside. That said, the conditions of the nation's food supply did become the cause célèbre of the book, of the period, much to the chagrin of Sinclair.

The changes that resulted were seen more at the federal level and targeted the wholesale meat industry and the regulation of commercial food products and labeling laws. I am not certain how restaurant regulations are set up, but I do know that the agency that has original jurisdiction over such matters is the county health department. For restaurants, I know federal agencies are always reviewing protocols and testing ways to improve things, but I believe some of those findings become more of advisories that states and counties must implement and not forced by the federal government. This, I guess, is sort of the fact that you have the Interstate Commerce Clause (e.g. wholesale meat inspections) and the 10th Amendment (individual restaurants' inspections).

As for the "educated consumer," maybe I give too much credit to my fellow Americans. That said, while I do agree that most people are unaware of how a commercial kitchen works and are even unaware of more basic food safety guidelines like the "danger zone" in food temperatures, hand washing is one thing most people would probably consider a "good and necessary practice." Sort of like how not all people know the proper PSI of their tires or how to change them, or how to drive in certain hazardous conditions, but most people know that wearing a seat belt is very important.

If I were a legislator and a bill like the one the senator proposed came up for a vote, I'd vote against it in a New York minute. That said, if that travesty of a law were to pass, I'd find solace in the signs regulation. I wouldn't feel that bad if the senator were to eat in a restaurant that had employees that didn't wash their hands and he ended up suffering foodborne illness.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

The freedom not to wash my hands after using the bathroom while at work is not a freedom I'm terribly interested in having. Call me a communist.

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

You Communist, you! How dare you don't want to live in the days of The Jungle by Sinclair!

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

I thought this post would have drawn out all the anarcho capitalists or weird right libertarians

 

Re: GOP REP: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash their hands after using the to

It's not benevolence of a butcher or a baker they rely on... But on a very visible hand of public outrage forcing some soap into the invisible hand of the market. /*hides*/