Some years ago in Ireland, the same question arose. After a nationwide purge of small-scale producers—cheesemakers or smokers who were too small to modernize under new E.U. regulations, for example—a grassroots group led by Myrtle Allen lobbied the government, and officials agreed to listen. After some dialogue on both sides, sharing of data, and some laying out of ground rules, the government accepted. “As far as I know, no one ever died of food poisoning from eating cake,” one lawmaker concluded.

Each farmers market in Ireland sets its own rules regarding how it operates—how local the produce must be, for instance, or how regularly producers must commit to showing up, and in some cases, the rules for belonging are quite exclusive. But the most relaxed among the markets—and among the most charming—allow anyone who rolls up on a given Saturday with food and a lockbox to sell food. My friend Etaoin will walk through her neighbor’s orchard on a Friday afternoon, pick windfall fruit—apples, pears, crabapples—and bake tarts with them. I think it’s cool that the government encourages this enthusiasm rather than dampens it, and, blasé as their attitude may seem, so far no one has died of food poisoning!

Could America the Fearful and Germ-phobic ever allow a similar system? I hope so—the benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks, which are slight anyway, I think (at least as far as baked good are concerned). Maybe a prerequisite to selling could be an education component (hygiene, traceability—no one is advocating a return to disgusting kitchens), but especially in small communities, accountability lives in parallel to reputation, and I think it could be workable.

I’ll be curious to see how it goes down in Wyoming.