Maryland has gotten a little more focused on keeping restaurant customers with food allergies safe. A bill now pending approval in the state senate mandates that all commercial kitchens have allergy awareness training, and that foodservice operations must always have one employee on-premise who has completed a food allergen awareness training course and passed a…

Sixteen years after neighboring Los Angeles County began posting letter grades to indicate the outcome of restaurants’ health inspections, Orange County is considering whether it should update how it publicizes a restaurant’s status. But instead of shifting from its longtime orange decal system to the more distinctive and easy-to-spot letter grades found in many major…

The National Restaurant Association wants operators to go to Washington next month and “Tell Congress That America Works Here.” That’s the theme for the NRA’s 2014 Public Affairs Conference, April 29-30, in Washington, D.C. The association is focused on what it calls an unprecedented number of legislative challenges, from healthcare and taxes to minimum wage…

At least one province in Canada looks likely to follow the path American chains already are treading. Ontario could become the first province in Canada to mandate big chain restaurants, c-stores and grocery stores post calorie counts on all of their menus. The draft legislation would require establishments that sell dine-in meals to display the…

Last month’s fatal carbon-monoxide leak in a Long Island restaurant has prompted a push by city and state lawmakers to make carbon-monoxide detectors mandatory in foodservice operations. A Legal Sea Foods restaurant manager was killed and 27 others were sickened in the carbon-monoxide leak on Feb. 22. Investigators say a faulty flue pipe in the…

The gloves are off, or they will be if a California legislator has his way. The state’s new law prohibiting bare-hand contact with ready-to-eat foods is under siege, thanks to a Sacramento assemblyman’s proposed repeal, which changes the state’s health code from “minimizing” to “prohibiting” bare-hand contact with food.  “It’s not about whether there are…

California lawmakers want to turn up the heat on thieves who steal restaurants’ used kitchen grease, a hot commodity in the biofuel industry. Assembly Bill 1566—aimed at curbing the rise in kitchen-grease theft by giving law enforcement the tools needed to stop the criminals—was introduced Jan. 30. Existing state law already requires licensed renderers to…

Late-night comedians like to dig up and mock antiquated rules and laws that local governments never knew about. They, and everyone else, missed this one in New York, where a local regulation that bans the serving of drinking water unless requested has been flouted so routinely that when its repeal goes into effect this month…

Where does the U.S.’ uneaten food go? Every year the country’s 312.7 million people are disposing of approximately 80 billion lb. of food waste—that’s more than 250 lb. of food per person being thrown out and buried in landfills annually. The National Restaurant Association has partnered with the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Food Marketing…

While much of the country digs out of the snow, California is facing a severe drought, likely the worst and most prolonged period of dry weather since record-keeping began there more than 100 years ago. The state had no precipitation in January, normally its rainy month, and state officials say California’s reservoirs are 20% lower…