Perhaps I'm more sensitive because my job dictates that I always keep the NY Food Safety Standards in the forefront of my mind.
Had the response been different, I could have lived with this misstep and not posted to my blog. But I strongly feel the need to have a voice.
According to established Food Safety Standards, food handlers MUST wear gloves when dealing with fully cooked food.
I read with interest this post about a special parsha treat being prepared at a nearby bakery because (a) I on occasion eat the food baked from this establishment and (b) I have fond memories of these cupcake "frogs" (there was the year a certain child of ours was reduced to tears because we didn't realize that our teasing about "frogs in the kitchen" was being taken quite so literally.....).
What drove me to write this post here on MY blog, was the way in which a very SOFT comment on the blog in question was handled. Surprise, surprise - IT WAS REMOVED.
This concerns me on so many levels:
- Is the blog owner completely disinterested in a very real food safety issue? (we don't know if this dipper [or the cupcake cutter in a previous photo] has an infectious disease or even remembered to wash his/her hands after using the restroom)
- Will she pass the information along?
- Are only "OMG... that's so cuuuuuute!" comments allowed on her site?
How could this situation have been handled better? For starters, I don't leave anonymous comments. If the blog owner truly did not want to have anything negative in her comments section, she could have emailed me with the email address provided and explained to me that although she was going to remove my comment, she was most certainly going to pass my concerns on to the bakery (or even better yet - she already had, and they were going to implement changes).
Maybe I still hope that the internet is not only here to entertain, but also to help make our world better......
4 comments:
In this day and age, it's very important to cover hands when handling food. There's all kinds of microbes and diseases sitting on all the plastics and metal that we touch along with thousands of other people from all over the planet. There's lots of STDs that come along with it. Got to wash and then cover the hands.
In general, blog censorship is annoying except where there's meanness or profanity.
I totally agree with Shuli.It is so important to follow strict guidelines to prevent infections etc.Why should anyone be put at risk?Shuli was merely giving positive instructions to prevent mishandling of food to benefit anyone who will come in contact with it.We need more people like Shuli to educate others.
It looks like she took down the offending picture too!
FBB - thanks for informing me about this VERY recent development. I suppose that it was in response to my blog post. Censorship often follows the mindset of, "What you don't know can't hurt you"... (By the way she removed THREE different photos of bare handed handling of these cupcakes at THREE DIFFERENT stages of the prep process, by at least two different people).
I suppose, because of the way she chose to deal with my original comment, no one will ever know if practices will be changed behind closed doors.
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