I doubt I need to tell you about pickle-gate, but for readers outside the region and across the globe, it is a story about bureaucratic overreach—a tale as old as time but one with the potential for a happy ending.
A local guy enjoys canning and jarring as a hobby and likes to share the spoils with friends and neighbors. After sharing some pictures on social media, the City Department of Health decided that this good-samaritan behavior is illegal. He doesn’t have a permit. He hasn’t had a health or fire inspection. Odds are his kitchen isn’t commercial. He’s violating city ordinances, and it is our obligation to the health and safety of Manchester’s citizens to climb up his ass and inflict pain until he stops or complies.
They sent him a cease and desist order. Stop with the pickling or else!
Keep in mind that this is the same department of health that covered up the source of a norovirus incident that killed a man because a Democrat member of Congress owned the restaurant. They are also, as has been widely reported, proud of their own hobbies, like taking taxpayer money to make sure addicts have clean needles to shoot up heroin, the sale or possession of which is illegal.
The story broke wide, and Pickle-gate was born.
Daniel Mowery says he’s canned pickles, jams, tomatoes, and more for decades. He first started the hobby when he was 20 years old, learning the recipes from his grandmother in Pennsylvania. He hasn’t stopped since.
“We were brought up poor, so our family always canned everything that came out of the garden,” he said.
Every year, Mowery says he creates about 70 jars’ worth of food, preparing it all from scratch. He gets requests from friends, family, and those who hear recommendations, and sends it to them for free.
All of the supplies, he says, he pays for out of pocket. He also shows off what he’s making on social media, with pictures of the latest jars packed with his creations.
Recently, someone offered to pay him cash for one of his items, which he accepted. Then, he says, the problems started.
The money was reportedly to cover the cost of supplies not produced. Jars, lids, etc., but the specifics are irrelevant. The health department was doing its job.
“The City of Manchester Health Department receives approximately 100-150 food safety complaints from the public annually and investigates each one. We are governed by the code of ordinances approved by the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, and when we receive complaints regarding the home production of foods for public distribution or sale, we follow our standard protocol to conduct investigations and verify the validity of each complaint.”
I want to thank you for doing your job, as it has created an awareness that has already led to legislation addressing the issue.
New Hampshire has this thing called the Homestead food law. It governs the rules for regulating home food manufacturing, a fancy term for food created or sold from a home or farmstand. The regulations exempt many things from the burden of compliance with the demands of the regulatory state, including what Mr. Mowery is doing. Labeling is a requirement for exemption so people know what’s in the brownies, breads, candy, fudge, pickles, jams, and jellies (if you sell them). Giving them away exempts the labeling requirement.
Offering to pay for jars that contain free contents triggers the local bureaucrats, whose zealous devotion to ensuring no other dogs piss in their patch of authority has sparked outrage across party lines. NH House Republicans have already accepted the invitation to do something.
Usually, when legislators want to act quickly, that’s not likely to work out well for liberty, but in this instance, we are willing to consider that it could.
As a Dillon’s Rule state, subdivisions of the government can only exercise power that the Legislature grants them. By overreaching on the pickle guy thing, Manchester’s “we must do something and quickly” health department (all in on masks, distancing, and lockdowns – if you were wondering) has invited the vampires accross the threshold of not just Manchester, but ever other city with its own health department (most New Hampshire towns don’t have one, by the way – they defer to the State department of health).
It could still all go wrong. There are plenty of examples where this sort of thing wasn’t good for local control, but ever since COVID, the liberty faction has been pushing legislation to address the abuses heaped on Granite Staters in (mostly blue) cities across the state.
Thanks to a jar of pickles, it looks like they could notch another big win for liberty next session.
