{"id":16075,"date":"2012-07-16T13:14:48","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T18:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16075"},"modified":"2012-07-16T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2012-07-16T18:15:08","slug":"toronto-edges-cautiously-toward-allowing-wider-range-of-street-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/07\/16\/toronto-edges-cautiously-toward-allowing-wider-range-of-street-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto edges cautiously toward allowing wider range of &#8220;street food&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/07\/16\/matt-gurney-torontos-public-health-laws-and-the-rat-infested-hot-dog-stand\/?utm_source=dlvr.it&#038;utm_medium=twitter\" target=\"_blank\">Matt Gurney<\/a> in the <em>National Post<\/em> on Toronto&#8217;s inch-by-glacial-inch move toward allowing a bit more variety in the foods street vendors can sell:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Last week, Toronto City Council approved hot dog vendors to sell an expanded variety of foods. The expanded list is still far from expansive. Veggie sticks, fruit salads and bagels with individually packaged butters are about the extent of the street food revolution in Toronto. Even these baby steps are progress, though \u2014 they follow the total failure of Toronto\u2019s A La Cart program, which tried to expand the city\u2019s food options to include more \u201cethnic\u201d fare. The program, which should go down in history as the most botched effort the city has ever made, is Prosecution Exhibit A for those who believe that governments only exist to screw up things that really aren\u2019t all that complicated.<\/p>\n<p>But the city\u2019s concern about street food, though overwrought and frankly embarrassing, at least comes from an honest place \u2014 concerns about spoiled food or improper preparation hurting public health. But Toronto has always missed the point. The public is protected when governments monitor <em>outcomes<\/em> and harshly punish failures, not seek to control <em>process<\/em>. Health inspections are an entirely reasonable part of the government\u2019s job, with street food as much as any industry. And it seems that Toronto, while fretting about what food vendors might be doing wrong, hasn\u2019t exactly been doing a bang-up job of its own responsibilities. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hard though it is to imagine, other cities &mdash; even other <em>Canadian<\/em> cities &mdash; somehow manage to have all sorts of tasty treats for sale by food trucks, carts, and temporary kiosks <em>without civilization crumbling<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matt Gurney in the National Post on Toronto&#8217;s inch-by-glacial-inch move toward allowing a bit more variety in the foods street vendors can sell: Last week, Toronto City Council approved hot dog vendors to sell an expanded variety of foods. The expanded list is still far from expansive. Veggie sticks, fruit salads and bagels with individually [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,6,74,84,66],"tags":[244,661,207],"class_list":["post-16075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-cancon","category-food","category-government","category-health-science","tag-publichealth","tag-regulation","tag-toronto"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4bh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16075"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16077,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16075\/revisions\/16077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}