Editorial: Common sense lost in N.J. soup kitchen flap

Published 4:00 am Friday, November 25, 2011

For 26 years, the Community Soup Kitchen in Morristown, N.J., has been serving meals to anyone who shows up. It has never missed a day.

It started in a local church, but now involves volunteers from dozens of churches and has links with corporate sponsors, restaurants and community groups, according to a column this week in the Wall Street Journal.

It has never had a case of food poisoning.

But now the Morristown Division of Health has ruled that the kitchen must be regulated as if it were a retail food establishment.

That means no more food cooked in volunteers’ homes and no more aprons from home. It means servers may not enter the kitchen, among many other requirements, the Journal reported. Total additional cost is estimated at $150,000 a year.

Morristown health representatives wouldn’t return calls from The Journal, nor did they respond when we tried to reach them.

Even if there’s some flaw at the Morristown community kitchen that requires fixing, it’s hard to see why it would need suddenly to start meeting all the requirements of a for-profit restaurant.

In Oregon, food sanitation rules allow flexibility and inspector judgment when evaluating benevolent organizations, according to Deschutes County Environmental Health Supervisor Eric Mone.

He said facilities such as the Bethlehem Inn, Bend’s Community Center and the Family Kitchen are licensed and inspected twice a year, but inspectors have discretion in defining certain aspects of the rules, such as what constitutes an approved source of food.

Mone said his department works to be sure such facilities are safe, legal and above-board. It’s a delicate balancing act, he said, to be sure the rules don’t become a barrier to feeding the needy.

It sounds as if that kind of common sense is in short supply in Morristown.