California Senate votes to repeal “glove law”

Food safety experts say hand washing doesn’t occur enough in general, whether workers are bare-handed or wearing gloves. A study by the Centers for Disease Control on hand washing and hygiene behavior in restaurants found that workers who wore gloves were less likely than those not using gloves to wash their hands when they should.

Glad to read the California Senate voted 32-0 to repeal the law that prohibited ungloved contact with food by staff in restaurants and bars. There are many, many more ways state legislators could strengthen food safety laws. This wasn’t one of them.

SCOTUS on Pom Wonderful LLC v Coca-Cola Co.

The decision was announced today; slip opinion available on the Supreme Court’s website.

Contrary to some of the headlines this is not a decision about the quality of Coca-Cola’s beverages, but a ruling that one player in a market (in this case, POM Wonderful) may bring a Lanham Act claim against another (e.g., Coca-Cola, one of POM’s competitors in the fruit juice market) because such claims are not preempted by federal law (i.e., a regulation of the FDCA).