The Quest For Water

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I’d first like to apologise for the large amount of material covered in this initial post. However, rather than attempt to break the topic up into smaller segments, I decided it was best to get all of the groundwork and logic behind this blog out in public all at once.

Water Bearing is a topic near & dear to the hearts of many Gentles in the SCA and I feel that the current proposal by the SCA, Inc. Board of Directors (and the well reasoned discussion of possible alternatives) needs to be circulated as widely as possible.

If you have even a passing interest in the future of SCA Water Bearing, please read this entire post. By the end of it you will know whether or not it is worth your time to come back later and read updates as the situation progresses.

Thank you.

Baron James Douglas

PS: I’m going to use the generic terms “Food Safe”, “Food Safe Certificate” or “Food Safe Certification” throughout this blog. Please read them as implying whatever the correct name or formal title is for your local Health Authority’s version of a Safe Food Handling Certificate / Safe Food Handler Certification.

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Earlier this month (June 2008) I was forwarded an e-mail regarding possible changes to the way that Water Bearing is handled within the SCA. Patrick Anderson, President of the SCA, Inc. Board of Directors (BoD), has suggested that, after consulting with several Health Care Professionals and Attorneys, it would appear impractical to regulate official SCA Water Bearing such that it conforms to the varied food safety codes of the numerous geographic regions that the SCA has active participation in.

To allow the current situation to continue could expose the SCA, Inc. and/or it’s Officers to possible legal repercussions should there ever be an outbreak of illness that is directly traceable to the manner in which Water Bearing was handled at an SCA event.

To this end, President Anderson has proposed the following language be added to Corpora:

"The activity of providing beverages to combatants and spectators at SCA Combat activities is not regulated, warranted, organized, controlled, or sanctioned by the SCA, Inc. or any affiliate or subsidiary entity. All warrants, authorizations, or other formal recognition of this activity are by publication of this change revoked. This document does not either address or restrict such volunteer activity or the methods by which it occurs."

In the original official information release and in a follow up message posted on various SCA e-mail lists, it has been made clear that this proposal is not intended to curtail or limit the activity of Water Bearing or to prevent any SCA group from using official funds to purchase the supplies necessary for Water Bearing.

The goal, simply put, is to make Water Bearing an unofficial and unsanctioned activity in order to limit the legal liability of the SCA, Inc.

So why does this possible change to the rules matter to me and what qualifies me to comment on it? I have been a member of the SCA for 30 years and have been very actively involved in both Water Bearing and the Chirurgeonate (and several of their previous unofficial incarnations) for the past 25 of those years.

I have an extensive background in food & beverage safety, hygiene, and sanitation (click here for an “all about me and my relevant qualifications” blog entry) that can be summed up in a single sentence: I’ve been doing this as a highly trained paid professional and as an unpaid volunteer (both in and out of the SCA) for a lot of years and I take the ideal of “safe & sanitary” Guest service very seriously.

This proposed change has not yet been approved by the Board and is currently being sent out for comment by the SCA membership at large. The Directors have requested that they receive comments from the membership regarding this proposed revision no later than October 1st, 2008. (BoD contact information here.)

This proposal seems to have generated a great amount of discussion on the various SCA mailing lists that I read and while some of the responses I have seen have appeared counter-productive or even inflammatory, many of them have been well thought out. I honestly hope that all Gentles with something to say on this topic (whether their opinions are Pro or Con) are also passing their comments along to the BoD for review.

Unfortunately, there seems to be an underlying opinion that sending commentary to the BoD would “… just be a waste of time…” because “…their minds are already made up…” or that the BoD is “…just a bunch of bureaucrats trying to take the fun out of my game…” (these are all direct quotes from Gentles who shall remain anonymous for the sake of peace and harmony).

My experience has lead me to form a much more positive opinion of the BoD.

I’ve never been on the BoD but after having lived in four different Kingdoms (East, Middle, Ealdormere & An Tir) and played in several others, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and chat with multiple BoD members (current & past) both about official SCA business and just socially over a drink around a campfire. I have found the vast majority of them to be well mannered, intelligent Gentles that volunteered to take on a challenging yet occasionally thankless job that is, in fact, critical to the continuance of the SCA as we know it.

What many people often seem to forget is that the purpose of the BoD is to ensure the long-term survival and sensible evolution of this pastime of ours so that we’re all able to enjoy it for many years to come. Sometimes, that can mean suggesting a less than popular rule, policy change, or a course of action that is often in response to, or in anticipation of, a real or perceived liability issue.

Think about that for a moment as you consider this: if the BoD were to knowingly let a reasonably foreseeable liability issue continue unresolved, it could eventually (in a worst case scenario) lead to legal action that might result in the financial ruin of the SCA, Inc.

Human nature and history have both shown that the people who currently complain longest and loudest about rules and regulations would probably be among the first to condemn the BoD for not having taken any action to prevent the disaster in question. How’s that for a double standard?

With that little bit of soap box speech out of the way, let me state for the record that I applaud President Anderson and the BoD for addressing this issue and I applaud even louder their willingness to accept and consider commentary from the SCA membership at large rather than just announcing a de-facto rule change.

Over the years I have seen Water Bearing grow from a haphazard last minute activity to one that, in many regions, is very clearly organized and run by Guilds, groups or indivduals that follow sensible "Non Contact Water Bearing" guidelines and use easy to understand, Health Department approved sanitation protocols to ensure that any risks to the public health and safety are kept to the barest possible minimum.

While a great number of Gentles are out there working very hard to ensure that SCA Water Bearing is as safe as possible, the reality is that practices and behaviours that put the health of event attendees at risk still take place on a regular basis. The most common high-risk Water Bearing activities I see are:

The use of old style water bottles that require the user to make full mouth contact with the straw, nozzle, or bottle neck in order to take a drink

Newer contact free “sport style” bottles being used in a full mouth contact fashion by the people drinking from them (this is often the result of a lack of communication between the Water Bearer and the person drinking)

Potentially contaminated contact free bottles (as described above) not immediately being removed from service until they can be properly sanitized and the contents refreshed

Water Bearing equipment not being properly cleaned, sanitized, and allowed to fully air dry after they have been used (e.g.: when packing it all away at the end of the event or when cleaning it at home immediately after an event) or when equipment is not properly sanitized just before it is used the next time (e.g.: when it arrives at the event after being in a dusty storage locker beside a box of leaky tiki torches for two months).

While these four common occurrences these may seem like trivial risk factors, they could in fact combine in a devastating illness outbreak among the populace at an event were the proper conditions present.

Caution, Science Content!

Mumps is a viral infection of the salivary glands and is also referred to as Infectious Parotitis and the Mumps virus is found most often in saliva. It is spread from person-to-person when infected saliva or droplets enters a person’s mouth or nose from a sneeze or cough, or from other activities that involve the exchange of saliva, such as kissing or sharing food, drinks or water bottles.

One out of three people who are infected with Mumps have symptoms of a cold but no salivary gland swelling and an infected person is able to spread Mumps from three days before any symptoms appear until nine days after salivary glands begin swelling. A person is most contagious in the one to two days before salivary glands begin to swell. In rare cases, Mumps can lead to serious complications such as sterility, meningitis, and deafness.

While a widespread outbreak of this nature may seem unlikely, consider this… in the Fall of 2007, the Alberta inter-university hockey series had to be postponed after more than six Calgary-area hockey teams reported outbreaks of the Mumps virus (in one case, 14 members of a single team had became infected).

The outbreak was directly traceable to common sports related activities such as shared water bottles and bodily contact with surfaces or equipment that had become contaminated by the sweat of an infected person (both of which are very real risk factors commonly encountered by both martial activity participants and non-combatants alike at many SCA events).

Given what I’ve described above, you might wonder why I’m not in favour of the current proposal to discontinue Water Bearing as an official SCA activity? In my experience, properly planned and executed Water Bearing has done more good for the general health and wellness of the SCA populace than it has ever done in the way of harm.

The key words to that statement are “properly planned and executed" Water Bearing and trying to ensure that this planning and execution meets or exceeds local health standards and regulations is where the BoD is finding itself facing difficulties.

President Anderson states (in part): “The relevant laws vary from state by state, county by county and country by country. I determined that the best way to do this would be to make “waterbearing” unofficial and unsanctioned by the SCA, Inc. and proposed this change to the Board. The only other option would be to regulate waterbearing, and to regulate it such that it follows the various food safety codes of the various states and countries the SCA participates in. This would be unwieldy, impractical and expensive for the SCA to do.”

I fully agree with, and support this conclusion as stated but have an alternative course of action to suggest that I’m hoping might satisfy the risk analysis people involved (the BoD and the SCA, Inc.’s Legal Counsel) without causing the front line people involved (the Water Bearers of the Known World) too much extra in the way of additional work or grief.

First, I’d like to relate a personal experience that shows just how difficult it can be to comply with varying health standards between different regions…

As part of my Chef training, I acquired a “Safe Food Handler Certification” that was issued to standards defined by the Federal Government of Canada. When I moved to British Columbia, the local Health Department informed me that this wasn’t sufficient so I went back to school and acquired my “BC Food Safe” Certification.

When I later moved to Alberta, I was informed that neither my Federal nor my BC Provincial Certifications were sufficient to work as a Chef in Alberta. So I went to class to get my “Alberta Food Safe” certification and guess what I found? Alberta uses the exact same training curriculum and exam as British Columbia does! The textbooks we were given and the video clips we watched even had the “BC Food Safe” logo all over them – only the certificate & wallet card mailed to me after the course were any different.

If this kind of bureaucratic redundancy exists in two neighbouring provinces of the same country, imagine the sheer volume of paperwork that the BoD would face if they attempted to consolidate and codify the relevant food handler regulations from the Health Departments of every different region that the SCA is active in.

So… problem identified, acknowledged, and explained at length. Now what?

My proposed solution (that I will be sending to the SCA, Inc. Board of Directors as a formal commentary submission once I have all of my research data firmly in place) is that instead of eliminating Water Bearing as an official function of the SCA, we simply hold those who seek status as Warranted Water Bearers to a higher standard (specifically, the standard dictated by the local Health Authority responsible for the geographic region in which they are active in the SCA).

The concise legal wording still needs to be arrived at, but in essence, I will propose that for a Water Bearer to be recognized as official officer of any SCA group, they will be required to acquire their local equivalent of a Food Safe Certification and that Water Bearing at any event they are in charge of must meet or exceed the local Health Authority’s standards for such an activity.

Is raising the standard (and thereby requiring more effort on the part of the volunteers involved) really a better solution that eliminating the office? I think it is.

The SCA as a whole already requires Chirurgeons to acquire certain minimums of First Aid training before they are even allowed to apply to be a Warranted Chirurgeon and certain Kingdoms have some very high standards of technical / practical knowledge and integrity that must be met before candidates can be approved for officer positions such as Knight Marshall or Exchequer.

At first glance this suggested solution may seem like simply downloading more responsibility onto the shoulders of the front line volunteers but consider these questions:

Would you consent to being treated by a Chirurgeon if you knew they had no proper medical or hygiene training?

Would you risk your physical well being by having somebody with no training or experience as a Marshal (or even as a Fighter) be the one that authorized the next Fighter you faced in armoured combat?

Would you eat at a restaurant that didn’t have a permit from the local Health Department (or worse, one that had failed a Health inspection)?

If you answered ‘No’ to any of these questions, why would you agree to accept a drink of water from a group of people (acting in their capacity as Water Bearers), no matter how earnest and well meaning they may be, in which nobody has any proper education about the basics of sanitation or the risks of illness that can be spread though unsafe Water Bearing?

For the record, I’m specifically suggesting that these certification standards would only be mandatory for any Gentle wishing to be a formally Warranted SCA Water Bearer. This would still allow for general volunteers (the back bone of service within the SCA) to help with Water Bearing at events.

The difference would be that the Gentle(s) in charge of Water Bearing at events would actually have the proper training required to ensure that all applicable local legal sanitation protocols are being followed. Again, this would be to ensure that any risks to the public health and safety (and by extension, any potential liability risks faced by the SCA, Inc.) are kept to the barest possible minimum.

I haven’t done extensive research yet, but at first glance, getting a basic Food Safe certification in most parts of Canada and the United States appears to be changing into a fairly easy task. I think that many Regional Health Authorities have finally realized that the more affordable and readily accessible the certification process is, the more likely it is that businesses will take the time to get employees certified and that this could result in a general improvement in the levels of health and sanitation care practiced in those same businesses.

A couple of quick examples: The King County, Tacoma / Pierce County, and Kitsap County Health Departments (all in Washington State) all offer online study materials designed to prepare students for the formal class which is a 2 hour process including exam. The fee is just $10 and the ‘Safe Food Worker’ permit issued is valid anywhere in the state.

In Nova Scotia, the ‘Food Handler Education & Training’ program is offered at most Community Colleges as a 5 – 7 hour single day or two evening course for an average price of $30. Again, the resulting certificate is valid anywhere within the province.

If you’re wondering if one single certified person among many could actually make a difference, consider this: while some regions do require every single person working in a kitchen or a bar to have Food Safe or Liquor Safe certification, the majority of regions allow kitchens and bars to operate as long as at least one properly certified responsible person is on duty at any time that the facility is open.

As a mundane society we have come to expect this form of government mandated Guest care & safety from the food & beverage businesses we patronize. What’s wrong with our Noble Society seeking that same level of BoD mandated Guest care & safety from the Gentles who are supplying food & beverage within the framework of the SCA?

Please know that I am only referring to setting standards for Water Bearing here.

The Food Safety requirements that must be met by Gentles running Feasts or Camp Kitchens are already well entrenched in mundane law. While not specifically codified in Corpora, it has always been understood and accepted that anybody organizing a Feast or Camp Kitchen is obligated by mundane law to ensure that their food handling practices meet or exceed the local Health Codes & Regulations that are in place to ensure the health and well being of their Guests.

Part of the problem currently facing Water Bearing as an organized SCA activity is that even regions with clearly defined safe food handling guidelines may not have any specific guidelines that clearly address the challenge of a group of volunteers providing water service to 500 people during a weekend camping event.

A very important question that has come up among Gentles discussing this topic online is would a volunteer certified in one region legally be able to perform their duties in another region. (e.g.: Could a Warranted Water Bearer with State of Washington issued Food Safe training legally go down to California and run Water Bearing at an event there without first having to take the State of California Food Safe training?)

This is a very valid concern that I briefly discuss towards the end of this post and that I intend to explore in depth in future postings.

Now for the punch-line… I have agreed to be Head Water Bearer and Chirurgeon in Charge at Quad War this coming August long weekend. Quad War is not only being held outside the control of my local Health Authority, it’s being held in another province altogether!

So what comes next for me and where will this blog go from here?

First I am going to contact my local Regional Health Authority (Peace Country Health in Northern Alberta) and find out what standards they would require for the Food Safe provision of volunteer water service at an SCA event.

I will keep a journal of my progress on this blog with specific details and clarifications posted later on the website www.waterbearing.com.

Once I have properly documented how Water Bearing could meet the standards set by my local Health Authority, I’m going to contact the appropriate Health Authorities in the Province of Saskatchewan (where Quad War takes place) and present them with the Water Bearing standards required in Alberta.

I will then ask the question “Given the practices, procedures, and out of province certification presented here, can I come into Saskatchewan for the weekend and provide volunteer Water Bearing service that conforms to your local rules and regulations?”

My hope is that I will be able to use Water Bearing at Quad War as a test case to demonstrate that meeting or exceeding different health code regulations and/or acquiring the appropriate permits for an event location that’s a 12+ hour drive from my home (in a region that I’ve never even visited before, let alone worked or lived in) won’t be as impossible as some people think it will be.

This experience should allow me to clearly document the process of finding out just how easy or difficult it might be to function as an SCA Water Bearer and still “meet or exceed the local Health Authority’s standards for such an activity” at an event that’s being held in a Regional Health Authority other than the one in which the Water Bearer is already certified.

After Quad War I will forward all relevant information (along with my suggestion as to the proposed Corpora wording change regarding Water Bearing) to the SCA BoD with an invitation to further discuss and/or critique the process as I experienced it.

My ultimate goal is to show the BoD (and the SCA populace at large) that “accredited cross border Water Bearing” can be done and to help ensure Water Bearing remains an officially sanctioned SCA activity (even if it means that Water Bearing is forced to evolve as a process and that the volunteers who make it all happen are required to advance their own knowledge and skills as part of this evolution).

In truth, I don’t know what the future of this endeavour holds but you have my word (something I value very highly) that I will accurately report events as they happen, even if doing so means that my experience only serves to reinforce the liability concerns about Water Bearing as they are currently being examined by the BoD.

As Albert Einstein once said: “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.” Perhaps the destination of this journey shall prove to be one and the same…

Please come back again and join me as I find out.

Baron James Douglas
"Honor In Ministerio"
(In Service There Is Honour)