Restaurant owners in the Ballard area are chafing at new policies of the King County Board of Health, specifically the menu labeling requirement and the trans fat ban that are both scheduled to go into effect next year.

"At what point are people responsible for what they put in their bodies?" asked Pam Hansen, owner of The Lockspot Cafe on 54th St. The Lockspot is already voluntarily trans-fat free, and the menu labeling regulations would probably not affect the restaurant because it is not part of a chain. Hansen said she still objected on principle to the Board of Health's actions.

When the policies are put into effect, they will require some restaurants to label menu items with nutritional information similar to what one would find in a grocery store, and they will ban all ingredients that contain unhealthy trans-fats.

The menu-labeling requirement will only apply to restaurants that are part of a chain of 10 or more, but the trans-fat ban will apply to everyone.

"It could potentially be burdensome for independent restaurants, whereas with places like McDonald's there's an economy of scale," said James Apa, spokesman for the King County Board of Health.

Nevertheless, it is exactly this double standard that has agitated many in the restaurant business. Anthony Anton, CEO of the Washington Restaurant Association, said many companies that exceed the 10-restaurant threshold would nonetheless be burdened by the new requirements.

"Smaller companies don't have nutritionists on staff, or scientists working on flavors," he said. "There are serious issues of discrimination that attorneys will be researching."

A case in point is Anthony's Homeport restaurants, which has a franchise in Ballard near Golden Gardens.

Lane Hoss, a spokeswoman for Anthony's, said the restaurant chain is already 95 percent of the way to being trans-fat free.

"We've been working on this for a year," she said, adding that it has been difficult because Anthony's makes everything from scratch, and has had to find trans-fat-free substitutes for many different ingredients.

She finds the menu-labeling policy particularly odious, however.

"If we have to label, it's going to have a huge impact," Hoss said. She estimated that Anthony's menu would expand to nine pages from its current three. "Who's going to want to read through all that?" she asked.

"We were opposed to this menu labeling because it doesn't apply to everyone," Hoss said, echoing Anton's concerns.

Besides presentation issues, Hoss said the restaurant will have considerable difficulty analyzing the nutritional content of its menu items. As an example, she said their fried food would have to be sent to a lab to be analyzed, at a cost of $600 to $1,000 per menu item.

Apa said the Board of Health would provide technical assistance in the form of contact information for vendors and laboratories, but acknowledged that the restaurants will need to pay for the testing.

He said the Board of Health's decision on the menu-labeling requirement was based on a survey showing Seattle residents are very bad at correctly guessing the relative nutritional value of different foods.

Both Apa and Hoss agreed that it was still too early to tell exactly how the new policy will affect restaurants, because the rules to implement the policy have not yet been written. Apa said those rules will be decided on between now and when the policies go into effect. Aug. 1, 2008 is the deadline for menu labeling and May 1, 2008 is the deadline to remove trans-fats, with an extension to Feb. 1, 2009 for bakeries and other businesses that make products that use yeast.

Milo Anderson is a student at the University of Washington News Laboratory and may be reached via bnteditor@robinsonnews.com