The Duluth News Tribune reports that when Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Duluth served free breakfast to its Hillside neighbors on Saturday, it had all the needed ingredients: eggs, milk, bread, cereal … and food-safety training.

The latter is the result of the so-called “church lady law” that went into effect Aug. 1. The law exempts faith-based organizations that serve food to groups of people from routine health inspections. But the people who prepare the food must have state-approved training.

That requirement doesn’t apply to funeral dinners, wedding dinners and potlucks as long as they are on the church’s property, said Deborah Durkin of the Minnesota Department of Health.

It does apply to Gloria Dei’s breakfasts, your Boy Scout troop’s meatball fundraiser and Our Savior’s Lutheran Church’s lutefisk dinner. In the case of the latter, the law is fine with Christina Kadelbach, youth minister and small group coordinator at the Cloquet church.

“Working in a church and also being a mother, I think it’s important that we pay attention to the safety of food preparation and serving it,” Kadelbach said.

“We are also the state of 10,000 churches,” Durkin said. “It takes a long time to get down to the 30-member church in Yellow Medicine River.”

Fr. Timothy Sas, priest of Twelve Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in the Hillside neighborhood, said he hadn’t dealt with the law. But he was confident that the church, whose parishioners include several restaurant professionals, meets all requirements for its fundraising meals and its annual Taste of Greece Festival.

Faith-based food safety.