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It’s just as easy easy to justify regulation by adding up all the imaginary costs that will be avoided.

Kitchen Fires and food poisoning are not imaginary.

How exactly does preparing food in the truck lead to food poisoning? Why doesn't your backyard grill need a fire suppression system?

1) If cooked food comes in contact with a surface that raw meat was prepped on, the cooked food can become tainted.

2) Most cities fire code say that your backyard grill is required to be a certain distance from the building structure (my local ordinance says 15ft), it just so happens that most people ignore the local ordinances. Those codes are b/c of grill fires.

Large portions of the world don't have these regulations and seems to be doing just fine. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore to name a few are full of food stands preparing food at the stand.

Funny you should mention Singapore, as the government moved all of the street hawkers to "hawker complexes" and there is a lot of regulation around food hygiene[1].

[1]: http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1637_201...

So, it's still easier to sell street food there than in Michigan?

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