There’s a new form of entertainment in our house – reading random posts from a closed Facebook page, Wake Forest Community Information. Between crazy requests (‘Is there such a device in case the power goes out, that you can heat your home’ which garnered ‘fire’ an answer) and crowdsourcing medical information (‘Any dentists on here? What is this?’ with a picture of an abscess) are food safety related posts.
Weekly someone posts about getting sick at a local restaurant or getting some physical hazard in their food. And then there are I-make-food-at-home-and-want-to-sell-it posts.
Facebook as a food sales vehicle is, according to friend of barfblog Linda Harris, not just a North Carolina phenomenon.
In October, KCRA 3 revealed how people were selling lumpia and cheesecakes from homes and street corners. There were even tamales being sold that had been cooked in a garage.
Three months later, there are more users than ever. The “916 Food Spot” group alone has doubled to more than 2,200 members.
They’ve added more entrees to their menus, including ham and cheese dishes.
“It’s like a fast-food restaurant and you go online,” said Linda Harris, at the UC Davis Food Safety Facility.
Harris said many of the offered items don’t fall under the state’s cottage food laws, which allow some nonperishable foods to be sold from home.
Harris said selling foods on Facebook is a lot different than cooking for your husband and kids.
“When you’re cooking food in your home for your family, that’s one thing,” Harris told KCRA 3. “When you’re taking money in exchange for that food, I believe you have a much higher level of responsibility.”
KCRA 3 brought the Facebook food groups to the attention of the environmental health departments in Sacramento and San Joaquin counties.
San Joaquin County officials have asked their district attorney’s office to help them look into the cases — because they don’t have the staff to do it themselves.
Food inspectors said they still haven’t received a single complaint of a food-borne illness from someone who bought a dish through Facebook.
Baylen Linnekin is an activist who has been pushing to ensure people have freedom to eat the foods they want.
“They are not making a million dollars,” Linnekin said. “It’s not like they are suddenly becoming this baron of underground food in California. They are making a little bit here and a little bit there.”
But Harris said there are legitimate reasons the food safety laws were enacted in the first place.
“Almost every one of our food laws is a response to one or more outbreaks where there was public outcry — actual pushback on the regulators to say, ‘Why aren’t we doing more?'” Harris said.