It's a wrap for dangerous donairs after health warning -- and good riddance, I say

Ever frustrated by the excesses of government bureaucracies and the frivolity of much of what passes for public policy?

Then wrap your head around this: Canada's Federal/Provincial/Territorial Donair Working Group recently issued recommendations on how to prepare the popular Haligonian shaved meat sandwiches.

The name of the project undertaken by the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Donair Working Group? Why, it was nothing less than the eminently self-serious title, "A Consultation with Stakeholders on the Recommended Guidelines for Management of the Risks Related to the Consumption of Donairs and Similar Products (Gyros, Kebabs, Chawarmas and Shawarmas)."

Yes, it sounds ridiculous. Yes, the Canadian bureaucracy is outrageously large. And yes, they probably didn't need to specify that the consultation would examine shawarmas in not just one common transliteration but two. (And what of schwarmas?)

But suppress your laughter -- and perhaps your appetite, as well.

That Orwellian donair bureaucracy recently issued a dire health warning about the spiced meat, tomato and onion snack -- a warning so drastic that it was accompanied by a recommendation to the provinces to overhaul the regulation of the rattled Canadian donair industry.

"Once in the freezer, twice on the fire."

That's how the Halifax Chronicle-Herald's Chris Lambie describes the new recommendations officially adopted by the government of Nova Scotia earlier this month. Essentially: meat must be cooked after it is sliced from the large rotating cone, and at day's end the cone must be chopped up and frozen -- not reused.

DONAIR DISEASE
If all this government nitpicking about the preparation of sandwiches strikes you as phenomenally micromanaging, that's because it is. But keep in mind that there have been three large outbreaks of E coli as a result of donairs since 2004, infecting around 100 Canadians.

E coli is nothing to scoff at, of course, but Nova Scotian donair aficionados (of whom there are a surprisingly large number given the donair's revolting, sickly sweet sauce, which my colleague Gillian Woodford describes instead as "ambrosia... nectar of the gods") are nevertheless incensed at the government. Nova Scotia, one donair-maker points out in a recent Chronicle-Herald article, has not been at fault in any of the three outbreaks:

“We’re purebreds out of Nova Scotia that do donairs,” said Wayne Misener, manager of the King of Donair outlet on Quinpool Road in Halifax.

“They’re Heinz 57 from the West Coast. ... They don’t know how to do the product. They’re trying to copycat...

"They don’t know how to control their meat out there,” Mr. Misener said. “We would have to open our own store and we would have to be hands on.”

So far, that hasn’t happened.

“Our name is ruined out there,” Mr. Misener said. “The donair has got everybody scared on the West Coast.”

Perhaps the new government guidelines will put Mr Misener's fears to rest. But, then again, perhaps in taming the donair health scare, we may be contributing to an even more dangerous threat: federal/provincial/territorial working groups on just about everything under the sun.

The question that nobody seems to be asking is whether some E coli might be a fair trade-off for a nosh that the government hasn't stuck its fingers into.


Photo: King of Donair

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