Health Regulations

[dcoody]

What are the Federal Health regulations that cover the ever more popular mobile pizza ovens. A friend and I would like to make pizzas right at the farmers market with the local produce. I hear about this being done in Seattle and was wondering what equipment might be needed to do this.

[dmun]

Re: Health Regulations

Health department regulations are extremely local. You may have to have a completely enclosed catering vehicle with running water and separate sinks for different functions, a commercial oven that's UL approved and a lot of other regulations. In other places you may be able to run an oven off a trailer out in the open with little interference. What I've heard is that there are less hoops to jump through, if you are doing catering for private events rather than selling to the public.

[dcoody]

Re: Health Regulations

Thanks for your reply,

I checked with our local office and they say they follow the federal regulations. All I could find on that was a senate committee discussing treating wood fired oven the same as barbeque. Apparently the change was prompted by all the problems restaurants in California where having getting their new outdoor ovens permitted.

[dmun]

Re: Health Regulations

Here's a thread that addresses some issues: search "mobile" for others.

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f37/...tion-5462.html

First I've ever heard of federal pizza regulations. What was it that ray-gun Ronnie said? "I'm from the government and I'm here to help"

[brokencookie]

Re: Health Regulations

You have to hit all of the basic food service check item lists. You have to have hand washing stations, controlled temperatures etc. Anytime you serve food to the public you have to comply with all of the local county health regulations. There are no specific "pizza" regulations, either county or federal that I am aware of. Just generic basic food handling things like having trained and certified food handlers etc. This is why so many pizza oven cooks have had problems. A wood fired pizza oven is not specifically covered by regulations so the local inspectors have to figure out how to classify it. If they consider it to be a BBQ you can probably slide by with less hassle. If they consider it to be on oven..... you might as well open up a restaurant. Since a wood fired out is outside their experience they tend to say "no" alot. I have rechristened my county health department the Dept of NO and No Way.

Good Luck

Bruce

[Lill Dave]

Re: Health Regulations

Ok this is thinking out of the box.
To have the health inspectors feel a little more in there comfort zone say the oven is a bbq chicken pizza and pizza oven.