Hospice shop cook wins battle with bureaucracy

Gloria Crawford can again use her kitchen to make jam for charities to sell but not her popular sauces or pickles. Photo / Peter De Graaf

A Northland charity jam maker, whose popular preserves were banned from a hospice shop more than three months ago, is back in the kitchen.

Gloria Crawford, of Waipapa, has been making jam for good causes since the 1980s, and for the past five years for Hospice Mid North. But a complaint in August led health authorities to order the Kerikeri Hospice Shop to pull her treats because they were not made in a separate commercial kitchen.

The jam ban sparked a local outcry, made the TV news, and embarrassed officials scrambling for a solution.

The hospice said it could be out $15,000 a year in sales.

But Mrs Crawford has finally been issued with a Food Safety Authority certificate, allowing her to make the jam in her kitchen. The first batch will reach the shop today.

The only hurdle left is a visit next week from a health inspector, who will watch the jam-making process.

Ironically, the rules Mrs Crawford has to work by - a pared-back version of the 90-page food safety programme commercial producers use - require no change to the way she makes jam.

What has changed is that she cannot use the kitchen for anything else while making jam, and must keep records, including noting her hours, cleaning and maintenance schedules, and keeping a record of each batch.

Mrs Crawford said she was relieved the fiasco was almost over. "It's been frustrating - I haven't had to deal with bureaucracy before. I felt like I was wasting time and had all that fruit sitting in the freezer, waiting to be made into jam, and I couldn't do it."

However, she said everyone she dealt with on her local council, Food Safety and the health board had treated her with courtesy. While Mrs Crawford and husband Ian were uncomfortable in the limelight, they had been buoyed by a wave of public support.

She thought the ban sparked an outcry because it was an affront to freedom and the Kiwi way of helping others. "I think people were just enraged - what on Earth's wrong with making jam?"

But even if she passes next week's inspection, as expected, that may not be the end of it. The certificate applies only to jam. To make her equally popular sauces and pickles, she will have to go through the process again.

She may also have to get her jam analysed to meet nutrition labelling requirements. "If it comes to that, I'll probably call it a day".

A loophole in the law allows people to make and sell home-made goodies up to twice a year without a certificate. Mrs Crawford was averaging 40-50 jars a week. Her brand, Thornhill, takes its name from her husband's family farm in Ireland.