Restaurants Would Have to Handle Customers with Food Allergies Under Md. Proposal

Crofton Patch ^ | March 18, 2014 | Deb Belt

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

A new Maryland bill would let counties require each restaurant to have a staff member trained on food allergens, ready to advise customers. Is the measure needed?

County governments may soon have authority to make restaurants accommodate customers with food allergies.

A new bill would let counties require each restaurant to have a staff member trained on food allergens, ready to advise customers, reports WJLA TV. The bill would also require restaurants statewide to encourage customers to notify servers about their food allergies.

The Senate passed the measure 33-14 Monday evening. A similar bill is pending in a House committee.

Restaurants could post an advisory on the menu, asking customers with allergies to notify their servers. Or the server could ask before taking customers' orders, says CBS DC.

The Senate version, introduced by Sen. Jamie Raskin of Montgomery County, would not apply to service stations or vendors at carnivals and fairs.

[MortMan]

So I should have no expectation that a food server has competence in knowing what they are serving?

No - You should have no expectation that the restaurant is required to supply quasi-medical advice under penalty of law, with the opposing reward of penalty of lawsuit if they are wrong.

If the server has no idea what is in a dish, then perhaps the server is incompetent (or new), and needs to ask the question of someone who does know.

The consumer is responsible for what they consume - this merely shifts the burden of protection to the restaurant, and WILL (absolutely) be the basis for high-dollar lawsuits. If you cannot foresee this future, I would posit that you have failed to see the history of lawsuits in the US past (along with the warning that "content may be hot" on a cup of hot coffee, to cover the restaurant's legal behind).

No disrespect intended, but this law would merely set the restaurants up for million dollar malpractice lawsuits.

[Albion Wilde]

What does income inequality have to do with food allergies? lol

Oh, I overlooked the possibility that you are working for SEIU, Occupy, HHS, DHS, Organizing for America or MoveOn.org.

Your ignorance of business is typically liberal Democrat. Why are you even trolling here?

[dforest]

I was born too far before this dumb crap. Geesh Everyone has an allergy they can claim after eatin’.

gas, bad breath, itchies, fatigue. Whatever.

[Ditter]

“Peppers and onions” that is hard to avoid when eating out.

My problem is flavor enhancers and they can be in everything you eat.

[DBrow]

I was making a joke, thank you for the insults.

[Albion Wilde]

I was making a joke, thank you for the insults.

I apologize, only after reading some of your comment history. Seems you are conservative on many issues. Perhaps you will accept that my posts were "shorthand" to imply that your position on the single issue of allergy regulation of public food sources aligns with the liberal Democrat position, however.

I do suggest a need for reconsideration of the big picture, in that your position on this thread indicates a lack of understanding of how profit is generated, why a reasonable amount of profit in small businesses is a good thing, and how profitability supports free markets and freedom in general. Conversely, overregulation cuts profiability and innovation, raises prices, shrinks the job market, reduces variety and availability -- and thus erodes overall freedom.

The restaurant business is a high cost/slim profit-margin business to begin with. Even seemingly small added costs can break the back of all but the large chains who are the WalMart of food quality -- mass-produced, cheap and not very special -- and will most definintely depress that sector, shut out the brilliance of small-business innovation from the marketplace and result in more overall harm to society at large than gain to the allergy constituency.

[TBP]

And then they could be required to let customers use any bathroom they want.

It’s not even as if these bills are aimed at helping people. They’re just aimed at destroying whomever lefties decide needs to be the next target of the hate on which their entire worldview depends.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

You seem to know something about this stuff, so riddle me this: when the hell did we start having all these severe food allergies?

I’m certain there have been cases of food allergies since the dawn of man, and a good friend of mine in elementary school had allergies to artificial flavors and colors. However, it’s just seemed that in recent years and decades this has really exploded, and the sensitivity to certain foods has become exquisite.

It’s as though the tiniest amount of peanut can cause somebody’s throat to close, just like only a tiny amount of urushiol (the active ingredient in poison ivy) can put bumps on my skin. It seems to me that these people live life walking on eggshells, with fewer friends, options and lovers. Is there anything being done to cure this stuff, and what the heck is causing it?

[DBrow]

Nobody is sure what is the cause, but there are naturally lots of theories, from mom’s diet while pregnant, to GMO food, to people just being more aware of the issue and they are now tracking it (the first food allergy diagnosis was in the 1900’s I believe, but I bet it was there in Roman times, just not recognized).

As far as what kind of life they lead, pretty much like yours but they learn to avoid what they are allergic to. This means that there life partner avoids it too, so they are restricted to a partner willing to give up, say, macadamia nuts.

Peanut allergy CAN be lethal but usually the person gets a big reaction, or a little one, recovers and moves on. Some activists try to make you believe that any quantity is lethal, but that’s not true. My food-allergic friend has a reaction or two per year, usually in a restaurant where he’s been assured the PB&J sandwich is prepared away from his sandwich.

Activism- that’s one reason there seems to be more allergies, there are groups agitating for political solutions to a medical problem, and they push for laws. That’s why we have peanut free tables in schools, rather than teaching the kids how to avoid. Part of learning to avoid is learning how to find out what’s in food they did not prepare themselves.

Foodallergy.org is a reasonable place to go to learn about food allergy, they are an activist group so read with that in mind. At least they don’t have a “ribbon” (yet).

[cyphergirl]

This is ridiculous. It is up to the person with allergies to ask if the foods contain allergens.

I have several food allergies. I don’t expect restaurants to be able to guess at them. I ask what is in the food before I order it. Any person with allergies does the same.

This is just another step towards a paternalistic world where no one is responsible for their own lives. Yes, allergies are a pain. No, the rest of the world has no obligation to watch out for your allergies.

I'm somewhere in-between on this. My daughter (now 3) had severe allergies to milk and soy. If we had walked into McDonald's and asked if the french fries contained dairy, everyone behind the counter would have told us "no"... but they use whey protein as a binder to stick the beef flavoring to the fries. If I trusted the employees, who clearly didn't know anything about the ingredients, she would have eaten the fries.

As a concerned parent, I checked the nutrition/ingredients list on the website of every place we took her to eat before she outgrew the allergies, or we took food with us that she could eat. As far as bringing food in, we only had trouble at one place -- but after we were able to show that the servers had no idea there was soy in the BBQ sauce (that they said contained no dairy or soy), they never bothered us again for bringing in food for her.

So, I don't think every employee in the place needs to know what's in every product, but there should be at least one person that you can ask and be able to trust the answer they give.

[cyphergirl]

When we went through allergy diagnosis for our daughter, University of MD was very helpful. Apparently eczema, being an immune system condition, is a pre-disposer for food allergies. In her case, she grew out of the food allergies around 18 months (as they predicted), but the eczema remains. (Eczema runs through my husband's whole family.)

I learned more than I ever wanted to about food allergies during that time.

[supercat]

Is there anything being done to cure this stuff, and what the heck is causing it?

Fair question. I have a suspicion that some of the conditions may have been killing people for ages, but such deaths were attributed to "causes unknown". If 99% of the children with a certain allergy die of unknown causes before reaching the age of 3, the percentage of three-year-olds with that allergy won't be very high. Preventing 10% of those deaths would cause an apparent tenfold increase in the number of three-year-olds with the allergy. Further, the number of people with such allergies would quickly become greater the number who used to die each year (since most people who manage to avoid dying in a given year will be included not just in the next year's population, but also the year after that, and the year after that, etc.).

I don't particularly doubt that there are other factors at work also, but I think it's important to note that statistical factors may cause things to appear to be getting worse even when they're improving.