It was never Martha Wren’s intention to become the face of the struggle between rural churches and regional health units in southwestern Ontario.But that’s what happened this past August. After reading in her community newspaper that health units were about to impose strict food-safety regulations on fundraising dinners and bake sales, the 46-year-old hospital worker went into the newspaper office to cancel the ad she’d placed for her church’s annual beef-on-a-bun supper. “We couldn’t afford to get $500 worth of beef and have nobody come and eat it,” she says, explaining her fear the supper might be shut down by health officials." The reporter said,‘Can you have someone at the church in 20 minutes? We’d just like to talk to you for a while.’And that was it.”

The next day, a photo of Wren, smiling warily and holding a Styrofoam tray stacked with five small pies in front of the Nanticoke United Church, appeared on the front page of the Simcoe Reformer. The headline: CHURCH FACES FINANCIAL CRISIS OVER FOOD INSPECTION POLICY. Similar headlines appeared in newspapers across the mostly agricultural southwestern Ontario countryside this past summer, each striking fear into parishioners.And no wonder -- these are not churches with large congregations and overflowing collection plates that can fund massive kitchen renovations.Many are more than 100 years old and struggling to survive as it is. It’s not as though the cooks who prepare food for church bake sales aren’t already careful about what they serve; as parishioners at small churches with no money to spare, they probably understand the implications of a food-poisoning lawsuit better than anyone else.And while it’s easy to understand the reasons underlying a heightened awareness of food safety (tainted water, E. Coli and mad cow scares), forcing small, rural churches to meet such exacting regulations may be the final nail in their coffins. It’s yet another example of how a bureaucracy initially set up to improve life can actually make it miserable.

The loud resonance of this issue surprised everyone involved, mostly because public health officials aren’t enforcing new food-safety regulations; they’re the same ones that have been around for more than 10 years.But when word got out this summer that health inspectors were starting to clamp down on food served at fundraising dinners, people took notice. And it wasn’t just in Ontario. Congregations across Canada, from St. Bartholomew Anglican in Gibsons, B.C., to Immaculate Conception Catholic in Deer Lake,Newfoundland, were alarmed to learn that their potlucks could be outlawed, and they worried stricter food-safety regulations might be heading their way.

The controversy in Ontario appears to have begun in June, at the 12th annual Rosy Rhubarb Festival in Shedden,when a public health inspector shut down a pie vendor because its pies were prepared in a kitchen the health unit had not inspected and approved. Some witnesses report that things got heated, culminating in pies being thrown at the inspector, which caught the attention of local media.“People asked a lot of questions,”says George Dawson, manager of health protection at the Elgin St. Thomas Health Unit.

As it turns out, bake sales in general are fine, as long as they include cookies, muffins and pies of the meringue- and custard-free variety; so is any food served to the church’s own members or invited guests. But matters get complicated when it’s a supper open to the public. That’s when church groups are governed by the provincial Food Premises Regulations and numerous food safety standards come into effect, regulating everything from what types of utensils must be used to avoid crosscontamination to the need for designated handwashing sinks in kitchens to the way in which dishes must be sanitized. And this is where big bureaucracy moves from the merely cumbersome into the realm of the absurd.

Although reported outbreaks of food-borne illness are uncommon at community suppers, they are not unknown.An information package distributed to churches and other community groups by the Oxford County Health Unit details a recent salmonella outbreak that was traced back to a community luncheon featuring fancy buns that had been brushed with an egg wash. (Because of improper handwashing, salmonella from a cracked eggshell had been transferred to the buns.)

Predictably, the possibility of food-borne illness is a concern for Wren and her fellow congregants at Nanticoke United, but so is the more real, and ultimately more damaging, possibility that fundraisers could dry up. Years ago, the church was an important gathering place for farm families along the north shore of Lake Erie. But in the late 1960s, big industry began moving into the area, and today the once bustling village of Nanticoke is little more than a string of houses along a main drag, hemmed in on three sides by an Esso refinery, a coal-burning power plant and a steel mill. “I imagine we lost 75 per cent of our membership with the selling of farms when the industry came in,”says Wren.“And a lot of the new people coming in just aren’t interested in [attending church] anymore. It sounds awful, but that’s the way it is.”

Wren remembers that, when she was a young child, the pews were packed and Sunday school was standing-room-only.Today, just 10 or 12 stalwarts attend the weekly service; in winter, services are held in the basement to save on electricity. The church doesn’t need a lot of money to get by, but Wren says it relies on funds raised at the two suppers it hosts in spring and fall each year,which pull in about $1,000 each. It is these two suppers and this $2,000 that the machinery of protective government is inadvertently destined to crush.

As with many stories like this, it’s a case of absent malice. Glen Steen, program co-ordinator of the healthy environment team at the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit, whose district includes Nanticoke, says it was never his intention to shut down church suppers.“We’re not going to go into churches and fine little old ladies,” he says. But the recent increase in fundraising dinners was a trend the health unit had to address. He says more and more groups hold bake sales and suppers because the old standbys like bingo don’t bring crowds in anymore; they’ve effectively been killed by a different kind of big institution: the casino in nearby Brantford.

One of Steen’s concerns is community dinners for which church members have prepared food in their homes. Since he can’t inspect all the kitchens, he can’t guarantee they’re safe, so now groups must prepare all food for public fundraisers in an approved kitchen, whether at a church or elsewhere. Wren says that can be tough for most of her congregation to accept.“The older ladies who cook our pies, they take such pride in their work,” she says. “They’re often the only ones who bake.Most of the younger ones,myself included,don’t.And because the older ladies perhaps can’t work at the meals, their contribution is to sit at home and do all the baking and have somebody pick it up.”

November and December are busy months for church groups as they host Christmas teas, bazaars and suppers -- cornerstones of their fundraising strategy. The congregation at Nanticoke United decided to forgo food-related activities until spring, by which time Wren hopes the controversy will have died down and they’ll have had a chance to see how other churches have followed or skirted the food-safety guidelines.

At least on paper, there are few options available to churches. The first, and most ridiculous, for a small parish, is to renovate its kitchen to bring it up to par with food-premises legislation.Where the necessary funds would come from is anyone’s guess, especially when already cash-strapped churches can’t rely on their traditional fundraisers. Another costly option is to hire a caterer to prepare and serve food, since caterers’ kitchens are approved by health inspectors, just like those in restaurants.Most practically, food could be prepared in an approved kitchen, such as a rented legion hall or community centre that has already passed muster, then transported to the church.

But the problem with the latter two options, aside from the issue of severely reduced profit, is that while the food might be safer, the charm of the supper would be destroyed. The appeal of a church supper is the chance to sample the wares of the best cooks in town, whether rhubarb pie or cabbage rolls. That’s why people who don’t regularly attend church do attend public dinners. And that’s part of the appeal for the cooks, too,who tend to be older women who don’t have a crowd at home to cook for but love serving up their specialties to an appreciative audience.

As that audience continues to decline, expecting small, rural parishes to fall in line with stringent food-safety standards is a cruel final insult.“In these farming communities,”says Wren, “health officials have already made such an issue about the water and the milk and the beef,” she says. “And now it’s the church. The same people keep getting hit over and over.”Without church dinners, the country may be arguably safer, but it’s a little sadder, too.