The first food delivery services began in the 1700s. Pizza delivery took off in the 1960s and has been a staple of the industry ever since. Teenagers have done it for decades. There has largely been limited, or zero, government regulation of these services across the United States. But a proposed bill in Michigan would change that by requiring people who deliver food to get a certification.

Beginning in the 1990s, online, third-party delivery services started up with the rise of the internet. Today, there are several companies that you can pay to pick up a food order and deliver it to your home. A new bill would make this more expensive for customers and more inconvenient for delivery workers – and it’s totally unnecessary.

House Bill 5705, sponsored by Rep. Tommy Brann, R-Wyoming, would impose new regulations on these delivery workers. If the bill becomes law, it would require any person delivering food for a delivery platform, such as DoorDash, GrubHub, Uber Eats, etc., get a certificate “from a program accredited by the American National Standards Institute, utilizing the Conference for Food Protection Standards.”

According to the FAQs for these standards from this private certification body, this means a person would have to go through a program at an accredited company that would include at least passing a test and possibly other training. 

This proposed regulation is totally unnecessary. It’s unclear what problem it is trying to solve, but if the issue is that employees aren’t properly or safely delivering food, there are two remedies already in place. First, restaurants don’t need to allow their food to be delivered by third-party drivers or anyone but their own employees if they don’t want to. Second, restaurants can impose this standard on delivery drivers right now, if they want to.

Every licensing or certification requirement is a new hoop for workers to jump through, which means starting a job costs more and fewer people will go through with it. State regulation should only be put in place when it can clearly be shown that the regulation is needed and that it will be effective at protecting consumers. If restaurant owners can already require this certification but are choosing not to, this signals that the regulation is ineffective and not worthwhile. Which means it certainly shouldn’t be put into law.

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