While public-health officials laud Act 106 as the result of a six-year effort to standardize food safety statewide, vendors have bristled.
Nowhere has that push-back been stronger than in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, where merchants say local Health Department restrictions go well beyond what the state requires. Some vendors have even scaled back operations to avoid the stricter rules.
Now some counties are revisiting their policies in the hope of protecting their burgeoning markets.
"There's a fear that this has created in farmers' markets," said Caleb Torrice, who bought a $750 portable hot-water sink to bring his stand into compliance at markets in Jenkintown, Doylestown, Lansdale, and Bethlehem. "A lot of vendors have an issue with it. They worry it takes away from the market experience."
The new guidelines categorize many types of vendors - whether selling meat and eggs or offering samples of breads and beverages - under the label "retail food facility." That means, for the first time, many must shell out hundreds of dollars for state and local licenses, keep new types of cleaning and sanitizing equipment on hand, and follow food-preparation rules proscribed for cafés, restaurants, and supermarkets.
In the past, each farmers' market held one license covering every vendor. If a health inspection found one stall lacking, the entire market had to shut down. Now individual vendors are held responsible.
These new rules may mean additional license and equipment expenses for some, but the law should make food-safety guidelines uniform for all the state's retail vendors, said Lydia Johnson, food-safety director for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.
"To sum up the change in one word, it's about consistency," she said. "For the first time, we're all using the same guidelines to do inspections on all types of food vendors."
