It may be a financial hardship for some low-income families to meet these costs, but they can be given the opportunity to exchange work time at the cannery for payment. Families of limited resources might leave off a percentage of their processed high-acid foods to be sold by the cannery. Sponsoring agencies may apply for grants, such as might be available from Title XX of the Social Security Act, in an effort to subsidize canning costs for low-income families.
To date, no community canneries are completely economically self-sufficient, so far as we know. There are centers in the South which do enough community canning to pay for all their expenses except salaries. To become self-supportive, some canneries are now developing specialty products to be sold commercially. Organic-health food distributorships and food co-ops are often a good market for community cannery processed foods.
The future of community canneries depends on continued interest in home gardening and food preservation, and concern for proper nutrition. Undoubtedly, the cost of food in the marketplace will also be a contributing factor.
Questions and Answers on Food Preservation
Consumers frequently have questions regarding home food preservation practices. Below are some questions commonly asked, and the answers. They concern canning fruits, vegetables, pickles, and jellies, and freezing fruits and vegetables.
_Why is open-kettle canning not recommended?_
In open-kettle canning, food is cooked in an ordinary kettle, then packed into hot jars and sealed. The food is not processed after packing in the jars.
Open-kettle canning is unsafe because temperatures reached are not high enough to destroy all the spoilage organisms that may be in low-acid foods, such as meat and vegetables, other than tomatoes.
Spoilage bacteria may also enter the food when it is transferred from kettle to jar, making it undesirable as well to can other foods such as fruits, pickles, preserves, and jams by this method.
Jars may explode, causing personal injury or damage to the oven. Also, temperatures obtained in the oven are not high enough to insure adequate destruction of spoilage organisms in low-acid foods.
Times specified for boiling-water-bath processing of foods do not apply to oven processing since the rate of heat penetration would be different in the oven and the products could easily be underprocessed.