That's a VERY important test in an animal adoption, especially if there will be children around. Food aggression is something that can almost guarantee a bite response, and not all dogs have this response. While food aggressive dogs can be placed, it's only with certain people willing to take the chance. For a pet adoption service, placing a food aggressive dog is almost a guarantee of a law suit.
Mark
Common sense dictates that you don’t challenge a dog by sticking your face against its face, unless it’s yours and yo know it well. Not all dogs are totally non-aggressive like a beagle. It doesn’t mean they need to be put to death, they just need control. I remember the old cowboy’s saying my grandfather used “be careful behind a horse or mule, in front of a bull and anywhere around a damned idiot”. The idiot human is dangerous to everyone including himself.
As a young adult, I had a rented duplex that was a block from the neighborhood redneck bar. I had a 6-ft privacy fence with a locked gate around the backyard that my doberman roamed in (and he was the old type, not the show type). One night I heard what I thought were the obvious sounds of a dogfight, went out the back door, and he had a drunk guy about fifty years old who had tried the gate, climbed over the fence, the guy got thirty plus stitches and a newfound respect for a 90 pound dog. To this day, I have no idea what the guy thought he was doing or where he thought he was going. Ended up going to the hospital, I ended up paying the bill to avoid a lawsuit, even though I had the gate locked, etc. This dog was one of those who was everyone’s friend unless they were fighting, or you left him alone in an enclosed space. If you left him in a house, yard, or car, he thought it was his sacred duty to protect it to the end, but you could turn him loose at a party with 300 people and they’d all pet him. Let a fight break out and he’d put a stop to it in a hurry.