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IPFS News Link • Food

Don't extend compassion to your fellow man unless you are licensed by your government?!

• Houston Chronicle
 
City puts a stop to homeless outreach Couple must have proper permit to continue feeding dozens each day By BRADLEY OLSON
HOUSTON CHRONICLE Jan. 13, 2011, 11:14PM
/**/ // no ads  Bobby and Amanda Herring spent more than a year providing food to homeless people in downtown Houston every day. They fed them, left behind no trash and doled out warm meals peacefully without a single crime being committed, Bobby Herring said.

That ended two weeks ago when the city shut down their "Feed a Friend" effort for lack of a permit. And city officials say the couple most likely will not be able to obtain one.

"We don't really know what they want, we just think that they don't want us down there feeding people," said Bobby Herring, a Christian rapper who goes by the stage name Tre9.

Anyone serving food for public consumption, whether for the homeless or for sale, must have a permit, said Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department. To get that permit, the food must be prepared in a certified kitchen with a certified food manager.

The regulations are all the more essential in the case of the homeless, Barton said, because "poor people are the most vulnerable to foodborne illness and also are the least likely to have access to health care."

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by McElchap
Entered on:

 Another example of government insisting that if you can't afford the good stuff within their permitted system, you can have nothing at all. It is so much better to be homeless and hungry than to have substandard housing or eat from a charity kitchen. Nobody shall be allowed to extend charity and kindness to those the government regards as pestilence not meeting their standards. Either you are a profitable wage slave, or an endangered beggar. And in the elitist plan to de-industrialize America, a lot more of us will no longer be profitable wage slaves. No king but Jesus!  Live free or die!  



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