Overlawyered » agriculture and farming

“Relax, folks, it really is honey after all”

Walter Olson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:33:46 +0000

Dan Charles at NPR reports on how parts of the media joined in last month to hype a report by journalist Andrew Schneider in Food Safety News raising alarms about the safety and authenticity of honey. (Similarly: Maggie Koerth-Baker, BoingBoing). “It sounded so right, plenty of people decided that it just had to be true. … But then we decided to look into it a little more closely. We talked to honey companies, academic experts, and one of the world’s top honey laboratories in Germany. The closer we looked, the more misleading the story in Food Safety News seemed.”

My Cato colleague Sallie James was among the few to take a skeptical tone about the Schneider allegations when they first hit the press. And as NPR points out, Food Safety News is part of the sprawling new media empire of Bill Marler, the very media-savvy food poisoning lawyer whose Marler Clark law firm has done much to sway press discussion of many food safety issues. On a different topic, did Marler really say the other day that raw milk farmers should count themselves lucky they’re not put to death?

Tags: agriculture and farming, eat drink and be merry, food safety, media bias

Labor law roundup

Walter Olson — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:24:30 +0000

Union withdraws, and NLRB drops, complaint against Boeing over plant location decision [Adler, earlier] “Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) Introduces Bill to Reverse NLRB’s ‘Micro-Union’ Decision” [LRT via @jonhyman] Video of “Organized Labor & Obama administration” panel [Federalist Society convention]
Suing Atlantic City is an established sport for current, former employees [Press of AC] After lawsuit win, former Gotham sanitation worker litters neighborhood with cars [NY Post via Christopher Fountain] Why have House, Senate reversed usual ideological lines on federal employee workers’-comp reform? [WaPo]
Murder of reformist professors reinforces difficulty of changing Italian labor law [Tyler Cowen] UK considers relaxing “unfair dismissal” controls on employers [BBC, earlier]
Taylor Law and NYC transit strike: “ILO Urges that U.S. Stop Violating International Obligations It Hasn’t Agreed To” [Ku, OJ; Mitch Rubinstein, Adjunct Law Prof]
Maryland’s misnamed 2009 “Workplace Fraud Act” bedevils carpet installers and other firms that employ contract workers, and perhaps that was its point [Ed Waters Jr./Frederick News-Post, Weyrich Cronin & Sorra, Floor Daily]
“Government pay is higher” [Stoll] Notwithstanding “Occupy” themes, interests of unions and underemployed young folks might not actually be aligned very well [Althouse]
More on outcry over proposed federal restrictions on kids’ farm chores [WSJ, NPR, Gannett Wisconsin, CEI, earlier]

Tags: agriculture and farming, international human rights, Italy, labor unions, Maryland, New Jersey, NYC, United Kingdom, workers' compensation

Food and agriculture roundup

Walter Olson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:16:18 +0000

Steve Chapman on FDA salt reduction initiative [Tribune/syndicated] Canada: “Health minister takes sodium-reduction plan off the table” [Calgary Herald] Flashback: FDA holds first hearing on regulating salt content in food [2007, Medical News Today] Discussion of my piece last week [Adler/Volokh, Instapundit]
More on McDonald’s sidestepping of San Francisco would-be Happy Meal ban [Fair Warning, earlier; background here, here, here, here, etc.]
“Caveat Venditor: Cottage Food Laws Great in Theory, Often Less So in Practice” [Baylen Linnekin of pro-freedom Keep Food Legal, who guestblogged at Reason last week]
Rather than get government out of way, left’s farm bill (”Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act”) would cut small/local/organic growers in on more USDA programs [Obama Foodorama, Linnekin]
Good riddance to monopoly powers of the Canadian Wheat Board [CBC]
Texas now allows home bakers to sell their wares [Austin Chronicle via @pointoflaw]
Widespread opposition to new Department of Labor proposal to ban kids from much work on farms [Nebraska Outback]

Tags: agriculture and farming, Canada, McDonald's, salt, small business

Baroque performers glum as Europe bans gut strings

Walter Olson — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:00:50 +0000

Violin and cello strings made of animal intestine might transmit Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, if you ate enough of them. [Telegraph via Tim Cavanaugh, Reason]

Tags: agriculture and farming, Europe, music and musicians

Food and agriculture law roundup

Walter Olson — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 05:40:59 +0000

Just as FDA begins laying groundwork for mandatory salt reduction in prepared food, research raises new doubts about the science [Reuters, Atlantic Wire, Alkon]
Feds now scrutinizing “everything about kids’ food” [Star-Tribune] Top-down remake of school lunches runs into trouble in Congress [AP]
“Christmas tree tax”: blame big growers and GOP lawmakers, not White House [Tad DeHaven, , Mark Perry]
Living right by a USDA-designated “food desert,” she’s “never had better access to food in my life.” [Angie Schmitt, Urbanophile] “As income rises, so does fast-food consumption, study finds” [L.A. Times, Sullum] “You can eat local, or you can eat organic, but it’s very hard to do both.” [Felix Salmon]
Bloomberg News (not Bloomberg Hizzoner) hypes food-as-addiction, child obesity figuring in more custody battles [WSJ] Michelle Obama on the role of personal responsibility, alas not in this realm of life [Andrew Coulson, Cato]
Private bed-leasing law is finally restoring Maryland’s depleted oyster stocks [Rona Kobell, Reason] Catch shares for Alaskan king crab might even be saving human lives [Adler]
Why bother cooking for your kids at all? Feds ramp up program that serves them dinner as well as breakfast, lunch [Stoll]

Tags: agriculture and farming, Alaska, eat drink and be merry, Maryland, obesity, salt, schools

Farm dust makes EPA blink

Walter Olson — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:02:25 +0000

My new post at Cato at Liberty examines the latest EPA about-face following pushback against its ambitious regulatory schemes. Alarms by farmer and rancher interests over EPA’s proposed curbs on dust in the atmosphere had led to ongoing political headaches for President Obama and Senate Democrats. More: Politico; Robert VerBruggen/NRO and more; welcome Neal Boortz readers.

Tags: agriculture and farming, Environmental Protection Agency

October 3 roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:13:55 +0000

Arizona officials say “accents were never the focus” of teacher fluency monitoring suspended at feds’ insistence [NYTNS, earlier] Reactions to my piece last week include columnist “Johnson” at The Economist (taking issue) and Hans Bader and Carrie Lukas (favorable);
Another highlight of new “jobs” bill: financial institution customers would help pay for auto bailouts [John Berlau]
Key New Orleans Police Department officer in charge of integrity of traffic-cam program accused of altering own plates [WWL] Red light cameras defended [Noah Kristula-Green, FrumForum] Why Massachusetts won’t raise the speed limit on Route 3 north of Burlington (NMA blog via @radleybalko)
Eight bad reasons for going to law school [Campos] Law schools have demographic but not socioeconomic diversity [Richard Sander, Denver U. Law Review via Legal Ethics Forum] And besides my own contribution on law school reform at the recent Truth on the Market symposium, check out the contributions by Hans Bader and Larry Ribstein;
Fellow federal agency FERC worried that EPA’s power-plant crackdown could lead to outages [WSJ] EPA’s plan to regulate dust from farmers’ fields led to public opinion blowback for President Obama [Diane Katz/Heritage, Environmental Legal Blogs, Radley Balko] Shutting down EPA isn’t likely under GOP reign, but reforming EPA might be [Adler, NYT "Room for Debate"]
Left rallies around New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman [Ben Smith, Politico]

Tags: agriculture and farming, attorneys general, Environmental Protection Agency, language bias, New Orleans, New York, red light cameras

Urban farming

Walter Olson — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 05:26:42 +0000

A neat idea for reclaiming abandoned city land, but it labors under a “cloud of extralegality” arising from a century’s worth of zoning and other regulations [Kristin Choo, ABA Journal]

Tags: agriculture and farming, land use and zoning

The dangers of corn shucking

Walter Olson — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 16:50:55 +0000

British Columbia lawyer Erik Magraken shares this photo.

Tags: agriculture and farming, Canada, slip and fall

Food law roundup

Walter Olson — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:07:00 +0000

Texas legalizes sale of home-baked goods; “Mom can come out of hiding” [KLTV; @JohnWaggoner] New York regulators order Greenmarket cheese vendors to stop custom-slicing wedges for customers [Baylen Linnekin]
Children who take school lunch more likely to be obese than those who brown bag it [Freddoso] And is there still time to save chocolate milk? [Boston Herald on proposed Massachusetts school ban]
“Obesity policy” in theory: “High-calorie food is too cheap” argument of NYT’s Leonhardt is open to doubt [Josh Wright] “Is obesity really contagious?” [Zoë Pollock, The Dish] Knives out among scientists debating food causes of obesity [Trevor Butterworth, Forbes] Feds look to regulate food similarly to tobacco in hope of saving money on health care [Munro, Daily Caller]
…and practice: “Calorie counts don’t change most people’s dining-out habits, experts say” [WaPo, Richer/WLF] Obama nutrition campaign: eat as we say, not as we do [The Hill] Of recent USDA “recipes for healthy kids,” 12 of 15 would not have met proposed FTC ad standards [WSJ] Nanny’s comeuppance? “States rein in anti-obesity laws” [WSJ Law Blog]
“Food safety chief defends raw milk raids” [Carolyn Lochhead, SF Chronicle, earlier]
“It’s Time to End the War on Salt: The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science” [Melinda Wenner Moyer, Scientific American]
After talking with experts, NYT’s Mark Bittman walks back some assertions about the European e. coli outbreak, now blamed on Egyptian fenugreek seeds [Science Mag; related, Kolata/NYT]
“If anything, China’s food scandals are becoming increasingly frequent and bizarre.” [LATimes]
Public criticism of activist food policy often calls forth a barrage of letters defending government role in diet. Ever wonder why? [Prevention Institute "rapid response" talking point campaign; how taxpayers help]

Tags: agriculture and farming, China, eat drink and be merry, FDA, food safety, New York Times, obesity, salt

Overlawyered » agriculture and farming

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