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发帖数: 29846 | 1 The CA Bill That Would Shut Down Every Small Restaurant
April 13, 2013 Posted by Warner Todd Huston
The State of California has one of the worst proposals of any legislature in
the country this year with a new bill that would force every restaurant and
food service business in the state to commission an expensive “risk
assessment” test for every menu item, a test that could cost thousands of
dollars for every food item sold. This outrageous and cost prohibitive
testing would certainly cause all but the biggest chain restaurants to go
out of business almost instantly.
In another exercise in nanny-statism, California’s State Senate Democrats
want this “risk assessment” conducted to determine whether food being sold
“contributes significantly to a significant public health epidemic.”
The bill, Senate Bill 747, is an addition to the current health and safety
codes and is currently set for a hearing on April 17. It was written and
introduced by Sen. Mark DeSauliner (D, Concord).
The introduction of the bill clearly says that the law would require the
food service companies to pay the state for the testing in order to fill
state coffers and notes that without the assessment, the state would have
the right to shut an offending restaurant down.
This bill, known as the Public Health Epidemic Protection Act of 2013,
would require the department, for every product intended for consumer
consumption for which it has credible evidence that the product
significantly contributes to a significant public epidemic, to conduct a
risk assessment evaluation to determine whether the product contributes
significantly to a significant public health epidemic, as defined, and
whether the adverse public health risk would have a fiscal impact on the
state of $50,000,000 or more. The bill would authorize the department to
charge the manufacturer of the product for the reasonable costs of producing
the risk assessment and would create the Public Health Fund, to be used by
the department, upon appropriation by the Legislature, to fund the program.
If the department determines that the criteria are met, the bill would
require the manufacturer to create, for approval of the department, a public
health impact report (PHIR) containing specified information, including a
list of adverse public health impacts and a mitigation plan for those
impacts. The bill would authorize the department to enforce the PHIR and
would authorize the department to restrict or suspend sales of the product
in the state if the PHIR is insufficient or if the manufacturer is not
complying with the terms of the PHIR.
As California politics watchdog Stephen Frank points out, “Pass this and
hundreds of thousands of Californians are out of work on Day One–and tens
of thousands of Californians have lost there investments and businesses.”
But there are other, perhaps unintended, consequences in the offing, here.
This law would benefit large, multi-million-dollar, national chain
restaurants in as much as it would eliminate their competition at a local
level. Mom and Pop restaurants, small local chains, and one-location
restaurants could never afford to have expensive tests done for every food
item they sell. But the big chains have a whole country of locations and
customers upon which to spread the costs of this “risk assessment.”
The big chains could afford the cost of these tests, but small restaurants
would just have to close their doors before the state’s inspectors do it
for them.
Further, this requirement would tend to limit menu options at restaurants as
those that could afford the tests would cut menu choices down in order to
keep testing costs lower. Additionally, menus wouldn’t change very often,
again, to avoid constant costly state testing requirements. This would
prevent restaurants from trying new menu items to appeal to the changing
tastes of customers.
And this is not to even mention that the expense of eating out would go up
as restaurants pass on the costs of these expensive tests to customers.
Interestingly, the bill’s sponsor, Sen. DeSauliner, is a party jumper and
until the year 2000 was a Republican. DeSauliner is also a big opponent of
the Second Amendment and is supported by the anti-gun advocacy group the
Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. | b*******n
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