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Look, we are discussing this in D&D, so I think it's only appropriate to defer to the opinions of the finest political minds in the nation. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is one of those few men who have taken on this weighty task, as this definition is crucial to the understanding of liability for sales tax in states like Wisconsin which choose to tax sandwiches, and I think it behooves us to defer to his definition:Scott Walker posted:"Sandwich" means food that consists of a filling; such as meat, cheese or a savory mixture; that is placed on a slice, or between 2 slices; of a variety of bread or something that takes the place of bread; such as a roll, croissant or bagel. "Sandwich" includes, but is not limited to, pita sandwiches, gyros and pocket sandwiches. "Sandwich" does not include burritos, tacos, enchiladas, chimichangas, hors d'oeuvres, canapes, egg rolls, cookies, cakes, pies and similar desserts and pastries and food that is sold frozen. As you can see, by this definition, Hot Pockets™, which are sold frozen, are not sandwiches. However, the process of heating it up and then reselling it would be a suitably transformative process making the Hot Pocket™ into a sandwich. But if you consumed it without first engaging in a financial transaction to acquire the Hot Pocket™ after being heated in preparation for final human consumption, you would not actually be consuming a sandwich under the terms of this definition. It is not the financial transaction or the heating alone which make the Hot Pocket™ attain sandwich status, but the combination of the two. In addition to the Hot Pocket™ Question, this definition also clearly resolves the Eggs Benedict Question, as the proposed definition permits the use of a single slice of bread. What is notable here is that Mexican food, which would otherwise meet the criteria of an open-faced sandwich in the Taco Scenario, is explicitly called out as not belonging to the class of things called sandwiches. Given that this definition was written back in 1997, we can only speculate as to the reasons for this exclusion. Whether the exclusion was due to the cracker-like nature of the hard-taco-shell being insufficient to qualify as a bread substitute, or due to more insidious reasoning on Governor Walker's part, we can only guess. Now, it is worth noting that the bill that this definition was attached to was not actually passed into law. As such, some of you may argue that this definition is inadequate or otherwise unsupported, but rest assured that we need not only consider Governor Walker's definition; sagely figures like Antonin Scalia and Richard Posner have both weighed in on the issue as well, by commenting on the Massachusetts court case White City Shopping Center, LP v. PR Restaurants, LLC, 21 Mass. L. Rep. 565 (2006). In this case, the court was asked whether the lease of a space in a shopping center to the burrito chain Qdoba violated the terms of a lease granted to a company franchising a Panera Bread in the same shopping center. According to the terms of the lease, the shopping center would not lease space to any other entity for which more than 10% of sales would consist of sandwiches. Thus, the case struck at the very heart of the Burrito Question. The end result of the case concluded that the terms of the lease were not violated, as burritos did not fall under the definition of a sandwich, for which they referred to a Webster's dictionary definition of the term as encompassing "two thin pieces of bread, usually buttered, with a thin layer (as of meat, cheese, or savory mixture) spread between them". Those more eagle-eyed posters may have noticed that this definition closely resembles that of Governor Walker's proposed bill, but with one crucial exception: open-faced sandwiches are not included! For this reason, Judge Posner disagreed with Justice Scalia's reasoning (Scalia had separately praised the decision for relying on objective facts like a dictionary definition, instead of allowing the definition to change based on the whims of modern society). But the dictionary definition is supported by more than Webster's; as noted in the afore-linked blog post, the USDA's Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book explicitly defines a burrito in part as "a sandwich-like product", thus placing it in the set of things that are almost, but ultimately not, sandwiches.
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Nov 10, 2015 05:06
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 23:56 |
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