Long before COVID, there were common food-related cleanliness standards in place. Not today, it seems! Perhaps to reduce labor costs, items are now presented in an open, self-serve display. For example, challah: In several supermarkets, rather than individually bagging challahs or having a bakery-style system where a clerk takes the challah from the shelf, bags it and then hands it to you—we now find trays of unwrapped challahs out in the open waiting for anyone to touch, feel or cough on (unmasked of course). When I asked a nearby employee if there were any challahs not in the open, he apologized: No, there were none.

This is both dangerous and unacceptable.