Look around---we have fewer and fewer choices for eating out---and government is the reason.

Put down your copy of "Going Rouge". The reason we have fewer choices for eating out... is the government??? That's a rich claim. It wouldn't have anything to do with bad business plans, plain boring overpriced food, bad service or the general economic downturn at the moment that are making people stay at home more often? Nah... it's the government's fault because they want to make sure restaurants are cooking the food properly!

"Bizarre rantings"? Like cook the food correctly? What a bizarre rant! But I bet if I was speaking in tongues at church on Sunday, that would be normal right?

Central command and control baloney! It that a new buzz term being passed around at the local Tea Party rallies? Freedom to cook! Freedom to eat! Freedom to sell! Where you hugging the Constitution as you wrote this?

You are right, people prefer playing Russian roulette when they go out to eat. People love the thrill of not knowing if the food was prepared correctly. People love not knowing if what they stuff in their fat mouth's is actually FDA approved, safe produce. Bring on the hot dogs made out of rats and mice! Bring on the ground beef from decomposed cows! Bring on the moldy bread! The new rule should be that every restaurant just puts a sign out front that says, "Enter & Eat At Your Own Risk". That will take care of everything!

An increase in fees? Well you are right, when your getting away with paying 0% for the past 50 years and then asked for 2% of your sales, that is an increase. New corporate rules? For instance, "Can you actually change the grease you cook the fries in more than once a year?" or "Can you stop smoking cigarettes while preparing the food?" or "Can you pick the dead cockroaches off the floor?" or "Can the staff high on meth at least wash their hands once a week before touching the food?". Why would any business owner ask the stores to make those changes?

The complaints about unsafe cooking (but then admitting it's not really a problem) and "greed" by small business (when the high prices are the result of over regulation and high taxation) can't be logically answered so they resort to bizarre rantings.

Sadly they bully the small guys that can't afford expensive legal defense. Look around---we have fewer and fewer choices for eating out---and government is the reason.

But that's the point! It's call risk management! Stop the problem before it become a problem! If Taylor's is up to code, someone dies, Maid-Rite gets sued, then the plantiff can't argue that Taylor's doesn't prepare its food correctly. If it's known they are in direct violation of a health code, did nothing about it and there's documentation that they purposely ignored it, then Maid-Rite isn't going to have a leg to stand on. This is why these regulations exist. It's not to screw the little man, it's to prevent them from getting taking up the highway by frivolous lawsuits!

I love how you ask all these general, unanswerable questions and then state, "We all know the answers to those questions!" No one knows if not one person has ever in 80 years gotten sick after eating there. That's impossible to know. Odds would actually favor that someone in 80 years got sick at least once after eating there regardless if it was cooked correctly or not. I hope no one is "diving" from Ames or Des Moines. That would be a long fall.

All I know is when I cook a hamburger on the grill, I don't get an unthawed, uncooked burger and rub it all over the cooked hamburger before I eat it. Just stirring up the uncooked and cooked meat in the cooker for 10 seconds before serving isn't adequate.

You should be ashamed... defending the "3-second rule" in a restaurant. Do you use plates and silverware at home or just eat off the floor? By your standards apparently that would be okay.

This reminds me of the movie "Coming To America" with Eddie Murphy. Remember how they got a job at a McDonald's rip-off "McDougal's"? That's essentially what Taylor's is. They claim to have some old contract no one has ever seen probably written on a napkin. Brand control is everything! You can't have franchises just doing whatever they want! It's corporate greed for the actual namesake's owner to want them to cook their food at a proper temperature and to pay them 2%-5% of their monthly profit to use the name? If someone were to die after eating there, who is going to get sued? Taylor's or corporate?

Regarding your comments about Taylor's being "scab" or their cooking practices, I can't help but wonder about your experience in the food service industry. So long as the food prep are is sanitized regularly it is not unsual to return spilled products for later use. And the "raw meat into cooked meat" -is- the crux of the issue. So long as the product is thuroughly heated to the required internal temperature (160F for beef I think) before serving then what's the problem?

Unfair rules? You mean making sure some ma and pa store isn't trying to be cheap and get around updating their equipment to make sure they are cooking their food at a proper temperature? Making sure places cook food at proper temperatures isn't an "attack on small town America". The same rules apply everywhere.

Exactly... they bought the "rights" to us the name 80 years ago. They didn't buy the name and the company itself. It's not an issue of being under corporate control. It's an issue of someone using the name of business they don't own and just doing whatever they want against the wishes of those who actually "own" the name Taylor uses.

So the Maid-Rite corporation who actually owns the Maid-Rite name isn't supposed to support the DIA wanting to make sure a scab place like Taylor's is up to code? That's some good old small-town thinking for ya! So you wouldn't be mad if you owned the rights to something and someone else used your name and product illegally and then complained when you told them to shape up or ship out? I can't open a store and call it "Best Buy", use the yellow tag logo, have everyone wear blus shirts in the store but yet the place is actually a flea market that looks like a Salvation Army.

Maid-Rite corporate has for the past several years been waging a war to assert corporate control over older original franchises. The fact that Maid-Rite corporation has publicly announced that they are in favor of the DIA actions highlights, for me, that this is more a corporate war then anything to do with food safty.