In the North Carolina state House this week the big news is the battle for Democratic votes to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the $24 billion state budget.
The Republicans appear to have the votes in the Senate but the House is a real tug of war.
However, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the legislature is not hard at work passing legislation critical for the future of the state. Take Senate Bill 444 for instance, it passed the Senate on a 46-1 vote and is currently in the House Rules Committee waiting to be scheduled for a vote.
Senate Bill 444 would allow restaurants to use oyster shells as serving dishes. Since the most common way to serve oysters is in the shell, it would appear that the current law which presumably prohibits using oyster shells as serving dishes is constantly violated. But it’s legislation, so it is more complicated than that. What this allows is a restaurant to serve an oyster not in it’s own shell. So the oyster can be cooked and put in another oyster’s shell the other oyster presumably having no use for its shell anymore. It seems that as long as the restaurant put the cooked oyster back in it’s own shell, everything was copacetic, but should a cooked oyster wind up in another oyster’s shell, well that could not be not allowed.
It is unknown how it was determined that some oysters were being served in shells formerly belonging to other oysters. DNA testing is certainly a possibility.
No doubt next up will be a law allowing boiled egg whites to be used as serving dishes for deviled eggs even when the deviled egg yolk is not the yolk from that particular egg.
And of course a law allowing peanut shells to be used as serving dishes for peanuts whether raw or roasted.
But the question on everyone’s mind is, if it passes the House, will Cooper veto the oyster shell legislation.
