Local ice cream makers face shutdown by state
Monica Eng and Chris Borrelli of the Chicago Tribune:
Today [Kris] Swanberg’s Nice Cream — on offer at local Whole Foods and farmers markets — is considered a star of Chicago’s rich and beloved artisanal ice cream scene, one that could be shut down entirely by state rules, she recently learned.
She says that a couple of weeks ago a representative from the Illinois Department of Public Health came to Logan Square Kitchen and informed her she’d have to shut down if she did not get something called “a dairy license.”
…
To get this license Swanberg wrote, in an email, she would have to:
- “Work out of our own space. Currently we work out of the Logan Square Kitchen.”
- “Have our product tested once a month for bacterial levels.”
- “Change all of our packaging and labels to meet state standards.”
- “Purchase a pasteurizer, which from what the state tells me will be about $40,000 or use a pre-made ice cream mix.”
Swanberg says that the IDPH officer who visited told her that her ice cream probably wouldn’t pass the bacteria tests if she continued to use fresh strawberries. Instead the officer suggested she use “strawberry syrup,” Swanberg said.
IDPH spokesperson Melanie Arnold said that it isn’t illegal to use real strawberries but that IDPH “does not encourage it simply because when you try and clean a strawberry to make sure it doesn’t have any bacteria, it kind of deteriorates.”
The department’s Dairy Equipment Specialist, Don Wilding, said that other ice cream producers use irradiated strawberries. He says look good but he can’t vouch for the taste.
Swanberg could continue to work without a license, Wilding said, if she used a premade ice cream mix that is usually formulated with stabilizers and other additives — the kind of thing typically used at Dairy Queens, Wilding noted.
On the plus side, food standards are nice. I generally approve of things that keep me from dying.
But when we get to the point where we can’t even make food with fresh ingredients, then maybe we should take a look at what exactly it is we’re trying to regulate in the first place. There has to be a way we can prevent E. coli outbreaks without forcing everyone to eat nothing but nutritive bean paste from a bag.