NYC health officials, in yet another federally funded food-denunciation ad campaign, Photoshop leg off obese guy to turn him into supposed diabetic amputee [my new Cato post, Radley Balko; more Caroline May/Daily Caller]
Are White House advisors reading my posts? Probably not, but deregulation of dairy-farm “oil” spills still gave President an applause line in State of the Union speech [also at Cato]
More on L.A. schools’ healthy-lunch debacle [WSJ edit, earlier] It’s an illustration of how promising pilot projects often don’t scale [Megan McArdle] New Penn State study finds no connection between child obesity and availability of “bad” foods at school [NYT, Philly Mag, study via Wajert]
“Obesity plateau” of American population should offer chance for calm policy reflection, but probably won’t [Jacob Sullum] “Food Lawsuits Claiming ‘Addiction’ Coming To a Courtroom Near You?” [Lammi, Forbes]
Despite lip service to “letting consumers make their own food choices,” Obama won’t legalize raw milk [Obama Foodarama]
A Los Angeles couple have been gaining publicity for their proposal to require publications to disclose with warning labels when pictures of models have been Photoshopped, the better to help the bodily self-esteem of readers who may feel inadequate when contemplating the skinny/curvaceous images or airbrushed complexions. [CBS New York] “After complaints from Liberal Democrat MP Joe Swinson, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority banned two digitally enhanced ads starring prominent celebrities for ‘exaggeration and being misleading.’” [Diana Denza, Betty Confidential; earlier on parallel developments in France as well as Britain]
A plaintiff’s-oriented group crusading for such legislation managed to come up with only a relative handful of employer advertisements exhibiting supposed bias against the unemployed. And on scrutiny not all of those ads turned out in fact to be “exclusionary”:
For example, national recruiter Kelly Services placed the following ad in the St. Louis area: “Currently employed but lacking growth in terms of responsibilities and technical proficiencies? If so, Kelly IT Resources-St. Louis wants to talk to you!” NELP zeroed in on “currently employed,” counted it as discriminatory, and ignored the rest of the posting. Common sense dictates that marketing to the currently employed looking to advance does not signal a rejection of the unemployed.
Beyond satire: “Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month. …NHS health guidelines state clearly that drinking water helps avoid dehydration, and that Britons should drink at least 1.2 litres per day.” [Telegraph] A writer in the Guardian defends the ban.
The official Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is menacing businesses with audits, “substantiation notices” and potentially stiff fines if they tell customers — even over the phone or in emails — that future price hikes on goods or services are the result of the nation’s newly adopted carbon tax. I discuss at Cato at Liberty (&Mark Hemingway, Weekly Standard).
“Wisconsin Judge Rules No Right to Own a Cow or Drink Its Milk” [Food Freedom; related on demonstration at FDA]
We’re from the authorities, and we’re shutting down your “farm-to-fork” dinner [Amy Alkon]
“FTC Makes Strategic Concessions on Food/Beverage Marketing Guidelines” [Lammi, WLF]
Given a little humility, NYT’s Mark Bittman might have noticed that his new junk food insight contradicts his old [Jacob Sullum, Reason]
Urban myths about Halloween candy tampering [Free-Range Kids]
New Jersey lawsuit over serving of meat to devout Hindu vegetarians [Abnormal Use; compare 1999 case]
“First lady will achieve goal of eradicating all food deserts by 2017″ — calm down, that’s “deserts” with just the one “s” [Obama Foodorama, more, more] Premise that lack of access to fresh fruits/vegetables accounts for poor urban diet, however, is sheerest fantasy [Katherine Mangu-Ward/WaPo, earlier here and here]
The promotional claims that General Mills makes about its snack product seem to be accurate enough, but the busybody Center for Science in the Public Interest says the company should be calling attention to other, less positive nutritional facts too. Stephen Richer wonders whether dating profiles are going to have to begin listing the candidate’s less appealing qualities. [WLF Legal Pulse]
Sarah Deming has sued the distributor of the critically acclaimed Ryan Gosling thriller DRIVE under Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act, saying it was promoted “as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” but “bore very little similarity to a chase, or race action film…having very little driving in the motion picture.” The suit aims for class-action status. [Lawyerist, Guardian]
Settling a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, the maker of the drink agrees to warn on its label that it really has quite a lot of alcohol in it and can get you tipsy without having to go back often for refills. As Elie Mystal notes, the “warning” might fit rather nicely into the beverage’s marketing strategy. Scott Greenfield has thought of a parallel case.
The Food and Drug Administration substantially restricts food companies’ freedom to promote their wares as not-genetically-modified, although quite a lot of grocery shoppers are (perhaps misguidedly) interested in making product decisions on that basis. Thom Lambert at Truth on the Market detects the symptoms of regulatory “capture.”
Feds fund Boston campaign bashing sweetened drinks [Globe; see also on NYC] More on ObamaCare “Public Health Fund” subsidies to local paternalist initiatives on diet [WLF]
Thanks to federal funding priorities, New York education department had 40 experts on school lunches, only one on science education [Frederick Hess via Stoll]
Proposed federal standards on kid food ads extreme enough that many USDA “healthy” recipes would flunk [Diane Katz, Heritage] Do FTC’s guidelines violate the First Amendment? [WSJ]
Compared with what? “Egg farm regulations still skimpy” [Stoll] Deer blamed for E. coli in pick-your-own strawberries [USA Today]
U.K.: Your kids are too fat so we’re taking them away [Daily Mail; earlier here, here, etc.]
Hospital pays $25M to settle lawsuit charging lack of Katrina preparedness [White Coat]
Democratic majority on CPSC plans to ram through burdensome CPSIA testing and certification rule next month [Commissioner Nancy Nord, more]
For matching willing buyers with sellers through Canadian pharmacy ads, Google agrees to pay fine of $500 million, a forfeiture geared to the revenue the pharmacies (not it) took in from the ads [Atlantic Wire, Chris Fountain]
“Woman Won’t Have to Pay for Her Own Cavity Search” [Lowering the Bar]
The FDA has moved to require tobacco marketers to place grotesque photos of cadavers and body parts on cigarette packs, and Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch thinks there’s no reason for it to end there. More: Ann Althouse.
Public-spirited litigants Western Sugar Cooperative, Michigan Sugar Company and C & H Sugar Company, Inc., have filed a lawsuit charging corn refiners with false advertising in their recent campaign to relabel high-fructose corn syrup as “corn sugar.” “The sugar producers seek an injunction to end the advertising campaign and also seek damages, including compensation for corrective advertising.” [PR Newswire]
During the successful campaign for Proposition 64 in California, reformers cited as an example of the sort of the “shakedown lawsuit” they hoped to eliminate a suit in which Bill Lerach’s class action firm demanded money from lock maker Kwikset because its product was marked “Made in U.S.A.” but included screws made in Taiwan. Nonetheless, the California Supreme Court has now ruled 5-2 that the proposition does not ban such suits after all, because consumers can claim to be injured by the arguable mislabeling, even though nothing was defective about the lock. Dissenting Justice Ming Chin, joined by Carol Corrigan, pointed out that to get around the Proposition 64 limit all that consumers “now have to allege is that they would not have bought the mislabeled product,” and that this “cannot be what the electorate intended” in voting for the measure. [L.A. Times, CJAC, earlier here, here, etc.]
Relatedly or otherwise: Glenn Reynolds interviews University of Tennessee law professor Ben Barton about his new book The Lawyer-Judge Bias in the American Legal System (”Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law.”)
Trouble with hunting bad/burdensome regulations: most of them have entrenched advocates [NY Times] “Obama — the Great Deregulator?” [Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe]. Earlier here and here;
Now we find out: tax hikes on outsourcing in 9/11 compensation bill infuriate India, were never vetted by Hill tax panels [PoL; more on Easter eggs in bill] Law firm that advertises for 9/11 dust clients is fan of Sen. Gillibrand [Stoll]
France will stop censoring some historical images of smokers in ads [NY Times]
“2010: The Year of the Angry, Company-Suing Plaintiff” [WSJ Law Blog] “The most sued companies in America” [Fox Business, counting federal-court suits only]
Death by drunk driving: As bad as purposeful murder? Worse? [Greenfield]
EPA gets specific on its plans to advance “environmental justice,” combat disparate racial impact in project siting, etc. [WLF, Popeo, earlier here, here, here, etc.]
Winners of Chamber’s “Most Ridiculous Lawsuits of 2010″ competition [US Chamber ILR]
Church & Dwight, of Arm & Hammer fame, has sued Clorox over comparative advertising of its “Fresh Step” litter brand. At issue is whether the comparison is scientific, per the WSJ Law Blog’s account:
“But cats do not talk, and it is widely understood in the scientific community that cat perception of malodor is materially different than human perception,” the lawsuit said. “Thus, it is not possible scientifically to determine whether cats view one substance to be more or less malodorous than another substance.”
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