Correction December 11: A previous version of this article misidentified the state agency that shut down the Bombardiers’ home bakery.
Shortly after Seven Days published an online article on December 10 about a Williston couple baking French Canadian meat pies for sale in their home kitchen, a member of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets meat inspection team came to the home of baker Carmen Beaudoin Bombardier to inform her that she was operating in violation of meat processing safety regulations.
According to Beaudoin Bombardier, the inspector instructed her to discard or give away the roughly 150 pies she and her husband, Dave Bombardier, had made so far this year. The Bombardiers were unaware that they needed to comply with any regulations for the seasonal project.
Beaudoin Bombardier has been making batches of her mother-in-law’s tourtière recipe to sell since the early 1980s, starting with the holiday bazaar at Christ the King School in Burlington. She advertised the pies through the Christ the King parish bulletin and Front Porch Forum. A portion of each bulletin-referred sale went to the Catholic school.
Scott Waterman, director of communications and policy for the Agency of Agriculture, said oversight of the Bombardiers’ meat pies falls under the meat inspection team rather than the Vermont Department of Health, which inspects restaurants and many small food businesses. Waterman explained that this is because the meat pies contain more than 2 percent cooked meat and are not sold ready-to-eat — that is, the pie shells are unbaked and frozen when received by the customer.
Such products cannot be prepared in a home kitchen and then sold, according to state regulations. Waterman clarified that the Bombardiers “were not processing the meat improperly, but they were doing it in a space they weren’t supposed to do it in, which is their home kitchen.”
Waterman added that the agency is “exploring how we can assist the couple to meet regulatory compliance, make sure their food is safe and reopen as soon as possible.”
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