Out of control government or a necessary code for Flaming food and beverage preparation?

This debate reaches far into the safety profession and the opinions will vary widely among us.  But recently a state, which will remain un-named for this article, passed a fire code requirement for Flaming food and beverage preparation.  One year, many years ago, we were performing audits for a business, and during each audit, we were treated to a nice dinner.  One night it was someone’s birthday and the restaurant served a flaming dessert.  Now this country boy had seen flaming desserts before, but I had never seen it prepared using the flammable liquid and lighter – they did ours at our table, but they did other tables around us and carried the flaming dishes through the restaurant.  As you can imagine a table full of safety engineers and fire protection engineers this caused quite the discussion, but I never once thought… “this should be regulated by the government”.  But later that week one of the FPE’s looked up some data on incidents involving “flaming food preparation” and there were quite a few incidents injuring customers and employees.  You just know the restaurants never consider the hazards of “open flames” from a hotwork perspective, but think of the fancy chef/staff uniforms and hats – you know there some synthetic material(s). And as we witnessed, they carry these flaming dishes through the restaurant, oftentimes passing it over the heads of other customers – imagine some of the flaming liquids dropping over the side of the dish and onto someone’s hair/head.  So when we look at these risks and how they were NOT recognized by many restaurants, we see the need for some type of intervention (like it or not).         

Here is what the state code now says about Flaming food and beverage preparation…

(h) Flaming food and beverage preparation.

The preparation of flaming foods or beverages in places of assembly and drinking or dining establishments shall be in accordance with paragraphs (H)(1)(h)(i) to (H)(1)(h)(v) of this rule.