The question was asked a while back about letting the public have samples at the Log Cabin DOG. I went to the Tarrant County Heath Departments website and started digging around. Our DOG would fall into the category of a temporary food establishment as persons vedning food or offering samples... These establishments must have a permit which is $50 per day. Also, all workers shall obtain a food handlers certificate unless performing charitable activities and there is proof of the 501C status. The tax exempt part only gets us out of having food handler cards, not any of the other requirements. In addition, cooking areas must have a roof or ceiling, approved floors (asphalt, concrete or plywood). Waste water must be disposed of in a sanitary sewer and all dish washing must be in a 3 stage wash station. IN addition, all food must be prepped and cooked on site and all receipts must be available for inspection (to make sure we dont serve road kill). There must also be a hand washing station. I called the health dept and spoke with a food inspector. She knew exactly what we did and confirmed the requirements which are spelled out in a PDF on their website. She also told me we could skip the requirements to have walls on our cook area as the DO covers the food and keeps bugs and dirt out. She said there was a 99.9% probability that a Tarrant County food inspector would come check our cooks and cooking area out unless there was a bigger event on the same day. These requirements are pretty clear cut in their literature. Everybody would have to have a food handler card unless we have a food manager certificate. We would also have to have floors in the cook area as there is not enough asphalt around for everybody to cook on. Everybody would also have to provide proof of purchase of their ingredients. I am leaving a bunch of stuff out, but you can pretty well tell offering samples to the public at Log Cabin would be very difficult. The health inspector said all the rules change with you bring outsiders into the equation. All this is to say, I dont think we will be able to offer samples to the public at the Log Cabin Village or other venues in Tarrant County. Other counties have their own rules. I am posting the pdf from the County under the files section.
Posted on: Wed, 09 Jul 2014 02:08:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015