Protecting Businesses from Unnecessary Regulations

A few weeks ago we had an interesting discussion as county council members about some new ordinance changes. One such change was for mobile food businesses. In an effort to set some policy on this new type of business, new recommendations were copied from the Salt Lake City ordinance for mobile food trucks. 

I am very supportive of these businesses, and happy to see that model successful in Salt Lake County. That’s why I took issue with one part of the proposed policy: “Mobile food businesses shall source local products when available.”
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Now don’t get me wrong, being part of the Winder family and a huge supporter of Winder Farms, I wholeheartedly support local products! But I have issue with government forcing a business to buy products from specific sources. The word “shall” was an issue for me because in legal language, “shall” is a hard and fast requirement. And since usually there are local products available, were we planning to enforce this and strip their license if they don’t source local products? The enforcement mechanism was not clear. Besides that, our restaurant ordinance doesn’t contain this language, and I thought brick and mortar restaurants and mobile food businesses should be regulated with some consistency.

One of my colleagues disagreed with me, wanting to keep the “shall” requirement. After the meeting I went to him and suggested a compromise… that we change the verbiage to: 
“Mobile food businesses are encouraged to source local products when available.” 

Better to have government “encourage” rather than force something. Business owners shouldn’t be subject to arbitrary and unnecessary regulations,, but should follow rules to protect the safety of the community. Overall I believe businesses need less governmental regulation, not more.