I know a thing or two about sausages. I was once a judge at the Australian Meat Industry Council's regional Sausage King competition and there is, if ever you're passing by the butchers at the Lyneham shops, a sausage named after me, a spicy pork and fennel number that's been selling its socks off since Geoff Martin and I first concocted it for a Food and Wine story a good year back.
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But what qualifies me here is that I've manned (womanned??) many a sausage sizzle, for the kids' schools and sporting teams. I've even reached the holy grail of having cooked at Bunnings.
But am I at all qualified? No.
Under new regulations introduced by the ACT Government, any organisation selling or handling food more than five times a year must appoint at least one of its members a food safety supervisor who then has to be contactable while the barbecue is going or the canteen is operating in case public health officials drop around for more than an egg and bacon roll.
I can think of five times a year pretty easily. The new parents welcome barbecue, the athletics carnival, the fete, Carols, and end of term farewell. And that's just the school-related ones.
Sports clubs, charities and even the ACT and Region Chamber of Commerce and Industry have all criticised the move.
Chamber chief executive Andrew Blyth had the quote of the weekend:
"Sporting clubs are run by people who volunteer time and they don't need someone in a high-vis vest telling them when to turn the sausages," he said.
Indeed we don't. Anyone who has ever worked a sausage sizzle knows that they're actually bloody hard work. When you're cooking up a couple of gourmet snags at home, it's easy. But try turning over hundreds of sausages, onions, steaks, eggs and bacon, to feed the masses. And that's not to mention the bread, the sauce, the mustard, the drinks.
But the hardest part, and that which these regulations are the most likely to affect, is finding the volunteers to do the work.
In my experience it's the same group of people who do all the work. Indeed there are dads I know who work like a well-oiled machine together, such is their system they've worked out, their familiarity with tong technique and saucing style.
But would they, indeed would I, be prepared to spend $150 to become a qualified food safety supervisor? Not likely.
And I ask myself, thinking back to years of canteen duty, were any of us actually qualified? In the case of the canteen, it was usually mothers who come in for a shift every couple of weeks. We handled food, we handled money, we handled the kids so to speak, but did we know what we were doing? What happens if I bake for a cake stall, or send in cupcakes for a birthday? Do I now need a piece of paper?
I've already had to pay $70 for a Working with Vulnerable People card and undergo a police check, just so I can coach my children's sports teams. You even need one now if you volunteer to help with reading at school.
With less and less people volunteering anyway, organisations, whether charities, sporting or even schools, are likely to suffer further if people think it's all getting too hard.
Granted, the qualified supervisor doesn't have to be there, just contactable. But the cost of training might also be a burden. $150 is a few cricket balls for the kids, or some books for school. Not that there'll be anyone left to do throw downs or read to them.
