Inspiration for an ordinance:
Q&A with Councilmember Carter

When I first heard of the allergen ordinance that was being proposed in my hometown of St. Paul, I was floored. Restaurants and catering operations required to have ready on demand an allergy handbook listing every ingredient and recipe in the house? In my mind, it couldn’t work for a huge variety of reasons, and it would be a particular hardship for the independent operator. Apparently, the industry felt the same way. As we know, the ordinance’s author, Councilmember Melvin Carter, met with a group of restaurateurs and industry stakeholders in the days before its scheduled first reading, and withdrew the ordinance at the following council meeting.

Since that time there’s been a flurry of phone calls between FSN HQ and various industry wonks, and the conversation always went the same direction: Allergy awareness is good, mandating an allergy handbook is bad. But I wanted to talk with the source of the controversy, and, finally, the day before we hit the press, Councilmember Carter called. Carter said he began talking about the ordinance with a variety of stakeholders, including the Minnesota Restaurant Association, concerned parents of children with allergies and public health officials, at the beginning of the summer.

Said Carter: “We all agreed on one goal, and I haven’t heard anyone challenge or object to it, and that is the fact that people—especially for those to whom this is a life or death issue—when they ask, they should be able to access ingredients in their food that’s accurate, specific and reliable, to the extent that the establishment is reasonably able to provide it. And that’s the entire goal.

“There’s Federal legislation that identified eight major allergens that account for 90 percent of food allergy (reactions). And that legislation says that prepackaged foods need to identify the eight that are in the recipe. The big frustration for me is the sense that you’ve got the information there in bold on the package, and I want that information. But I’ve learned that those laws don’t always apply to bulk purchases and commercial/wholesale stuff. So that changed the premise of the whole conversation.”


There are a few versions out there about the ordinance’s inspiration. Let’s hear it from you.

Truth is, my wife and I still don’t agree on the exact story, because it is so common for us when we go out. But here’s my story. My daughter is severely allergic to peanuts. We carry an EpiPen. If she comes in contact with the slightest trace of peanut from three hours ago, chances are we’ll be giving her a shot in the leg and rushing her down to the emergency room within 15 minutes.

One night I was heading home after a late meeting within the community, and stopped to get her some popcorn as penance for coming home late. She was two at the time, she’s three now. At this place, I asked, “Do you pop your popcorn in peanut oil? I need to know, because I have a daughter”—we’ve got our disclaimer down pat—“who has a peanut allergy.”

And the server says, “No.” And I say, “Are you sure?” and the server says, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” And I ask what kind of oil do you use, and the server thought it was vegetable oil. And I asked again if they were sure, and he said they were “pretty sure.”

I asked to see the bottle, and literally, within a second and a half he produced a big jug with a huge, bold “Peanut Oil” stamped across the front.


So the correct answer at that point should have been at the very least, “I don’t know.”

Exactly. And, to console me, I heard, “Oh, oops.” Which I find challenging (laughs). So, folks have asked me, “Is ‘I don’t know’ an OK answer?” And I think “I don’t know” is a great answer. The answer that’s wrong, that’s not OK, is “No,” when it’s really “Yes.” Especially when the right answer is a second and a half away. That’s not OK.

I think had the owner or chef been there, who really had a vested interest in the business, that wouldn’t have happened. So that’s what I mean, (for those other employees), one, if someone says “food allergy,” they could very well be talking about a life-threatening event. And two, that when someone comes in and says “allergies,” this is what we do because my boss has told me. They don’t have to guess or figure it out. They know exactly what to do to produce good outcomes for everybody.


Lenny Russo at Heartland lit you up a bit in his blog, but you met with him.

He and I had a great conversation. The good thing about Lenny’s blog was to explode this conversation in a way that was really important to happen, and helped to really engage restaurant owners. Some have brought me more useful feedback than others (laughs) but I’ve got a lot of useful feedback as a result. And my goal is to learn as much as possible so that what we bring forward can be effective towards the goal.


The industry says any food allergy mandate could open huge liability issues for operators.

There’s a way to do this to make restaurants less liable. Restaurants are already liable when someone walks in the door. We see lawsuits settled around the country, where a person identifies themselves as having an allergy, and were either given misinformation about the ingredients in the food, or the food was allowed to be cross-contaminated after they were notified.


There are chefs that are changing menus daily, buying ingredients at market, or have no recipes.

I would say, that they (still) know what they put in the food (when it’s prepared). As I have talked to individual restaurant owners. They say, “When I find out someone has a food allergy, I do this, this and this. And I say, “If only I got to order from you every time, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

So, what if we say if you run a restaurant in St. Paul we’d like you to have a written allergy action plan or something along those lines that all your servers are trained on that says that when someone walks into this establishment, and they say the “A word,” that there is some chain of events that falls into place. Which, I think we’d probably try to lay out a minimum criteria.


Would a server be obligated to ask, or is that the responsibility of the diner to notify the business of their condition?

From day one we’ve always said it’s the responsibility of the diner to identify themselves. I’ll ask the restaurant owners what they think putting up something somewhere, maybe on the menu, “If you’ve got an allergy, identify yourself, we have a plan.”

And, it would probably be wise for them to also say, “We’ll do our best, but the risk of cross-contamination is always possible.” What we need is an informed consumer to meet an informed provider, and we’ll all be able to make responsible choices. I think there’s some work to do to educate people with allergies more, about the risk of cross contamination and how to minimize the risk themselves.


Is this “action plan” enforceable?

It’s a work in progress. The way I like to work is to bounce stuff off of folks. And I take some flak for that, because folks say this should have been figured out before we had the meeting. My style is, and I think anyone that has worked with me would verify, that I’m not likely to jump and do something without having engaged folks. I ran for office on community engagement as a former community organizer, who feels like engagement is the way to go here.


Why couldn’t this issue go the route foodservice operations have handled gluten concerns with celiac disease sufferers?

I guess it might follow that same path. A number of things might happen. I know that if we look at current statistics, food allergies are a critical issue for probably about 6,000 St. Paul children. So, if we know that we can meet a potentially critical and life threatening issue for that many folks we represent with a relatively simple solution, then I think we have to do it.