Yet another interesting food that may never be the same following a safety crackdown, in this case by the Los Angeles health department [L.A. Times via Katherine Mangu-Ward, Crispy on the Outside]
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food safety
Remember how the food safety crackdown was going to be a win-win affair for all of us, with only the sinister interests of Big Food having anything real to lose? New Orleans Times-Picayune:
In an effort to reduce cases of a rare, but potentially fatal, bacterial illness contracted from raw oysters, the FDA announced new rules this month that will require any oyster served from April through October to undergo a sterilization process before it can be sold in restaurants or on the market.
The rule will essentially eliminate raw oysters — at least as Louisianans know them — from restaurant menus for seven months of the year. Even oysters that will eventually be cooked during those months would have to go through the same cleansing process before being added to any dish, a move some say would undermine the culinary integrity of some of New Orleans’ most famous delicacies. …
C.J. Casamento, the owner of Casamento’s restaurant on Magazine Street, said many chefs have tried the sterilized oysters in the past but have stopped because the flavor isn’t the same. … “If they try to implement this, it will destroy all the raw oyster restaurants in the city.”
Another restaurant owner, Tommy Cvitanovich of Drago’s, called the rules “ludicrous”, pointing out that they will also require sterilization of oysters destined for cooked use in gumbos, broils and po’ boys. Processor Mike Voisin compared the new guidelines to a “nuclear bomb” on the oyster business. And Louisiana state health officials, as well as fisheries officials, have assailed the new rules as going too far.
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And per this L.A. Times account, business — at least business with an organized Washington, D.C. presence — is on board, just as it was when CPSIA passed. So what could go wrong?
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A video is promised soon, and some of the speakers’ supporting materials are already online. Angela Logomasini has a writeup for CEI’s “Open Market”. Earlier here. I spoke at length about the CPSIA calamity and had a few things to say about the food side as well.
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“Parents and students at Tooker Avenue Elementary School bid a bittersweet adieu to home-baked goods Friday on the final day of class before a West Babylon district policy goes into effect that allows only prepackaged snacks.” [Newsday via Free-Range Kids; earlier]
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The American Enterprise Institute is holding a panel discussion in Washington, D.C. Tuesday afternoon and I’ll be one of the participants, along with David W. K. Acheson of Leavitt Partners, Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America, and Michelle Worosz of Auburn University, with AEI’s Kenneth Green as moderator. Details here. I’ve had a few things to say about food safety over the years and am also likely to draw on the potential parallels presented by the calamitous Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).
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The new regulations have 
drawn considerable negative comment from New York Times readers, and cartoonist/commentator Roz Chast doesn’t seem to hold them in very high regard either.
Only indirectly related — but also pointing up the unlikelihood of getting anything particularly tasty to eat in a Gotham public school environment 
– it seems that raw meat is not allowed in NYC school cafeteria kitchens, because it “poses too much of a food-handling challenge” [NYT again]
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Get ready for the “next big controversy in the wine business”. [Jeff Siegel, Palate Press]
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Updating our August 21 item: The Health Department in Middletown, Connecticut issued a “citation against St. Vincent DePaul Place on Tuesday for accepting some donated food from unlicensed kitchens. 
The department has asked the nonprofit group, which runs a soup kitchen, to comply with the health code by accepting food that comes only from licensed kitchens.” [Middletown Eye] The state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, is asking the legislature to loosen rules for charitable kitchens. [Hartford Courant] We covered the Connecticut pie menace nearly ten years ago [Dec. 13, 1999] and have since noted legal crimps put on cookies for troops, church potlucks, and much more.
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- Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce: “Elmer Fudd” commenter defamed us [Sun-News via Patrick at Popehat]
- “New Texas law seeks common sense instead of ‘zero tolerance’ in punishment of students” [Star-Telegram]
- Oprah can relax, poet’s self-scripted $1 trillion lawsuit against her is dismissed [THR Esq., Lowering the Bar and more, New Jersey Lawsuit Reform Watch]
- Overview of big push for new federal food safety laws [Kristin Choo, ABA Journal]
- And thanks for all the booze: “Chronic drunk costs SF taxpayers at least $150,000/year” [Obscure Store, Common Room]
- “We have made a grave mistake in politicizing the economy so deeply, and should back away now.” [Tyler Cowen, NYT]
- As a phrase, “sex toy product liability” is probably going to bring us the wrong sort of search engine traffic [Law and More]
- Overturning Supreme Court’s Iqbal/Twombly pleading jurisprudence emerging as key Congressional objective for trial lawyer lobby [Freddoso, Examiner; recent post of mine at Point of Law, and much other coverage there]
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- Online game purveyor Evony threatens to sue UK critic in Australian court [GameSetWatch, Ken at Popehat, Patrick at Popehat]
- 106: number of (counted) cases filed since 2005 that blame errant grapes for slip-fall injuries [ABA Journal]
- Bayonne, N.J.: “Connolly suing county for $1M over job switch” [Jersey Journal; background (city councilman took six months off from job as coordinator of 9/11 emergency call center; "doctors won't let him go back because it's too stressful.")]
- “Lessons from Andrew Sullivan’s pot bust” [Sullum, Reason] More: Patrick at Popehat.
- “The Appraisal Debacle: How Not to Regulate” [Jack Guttentag, Yahoo Finance, via Fountain]
- Bizarre: “Paralegal Guilty in Fake-Libel-Suit Scam That Briefly Won $3M” [ABA Journal]
- Idea for immigration reform: “Let the smart people in”. [Farhad Manjoo, Slate, via Alkon] More: “Free the H-1Bs, free the economy” [Vivek Wadhwa, TechCrunch]
- Academic finds that depending on whom you ask, “It’s not about the money” or maybe it is [Relis, SSRN/Pittsburgh 2007, via Burch, Mass Tort Lit]
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The Barclay Rex smoking shop must seek a permit as a “food establishment” even if it gives away the brew for free, the city says [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"] Readers wonder (h/t Jeff Stier) whether the city is also going to start picking on car dealerships, bookshops and even police stations that offer free coffee, a question to which I think we know the answer.
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“…for her role in the apple scare. She told me so.” [Elizabeth Whelan, National Post]
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Following an outcry from various sectors of the farm community, the U.S. Senate may have slowed or even broken the momentum toward federally sponsored numbering and tagging of farmyard animals. 
The upper house embraced “an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., that slashes funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Identification System by one-half in the 2010 agriculture appropriations bill.” [AgWeek, Drovers] NAIS, or the National Animal Identification System, has been promoted on (among other grounds) improving “traceability” of food safety problems. Earlier coverage here, here, etc.
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The vote was 283-142. From the New York Times account, which quotes four named supporters of the bill and no opponents, you’d barely get any sense of why the bill might be considered controversial. But the San Francisco Chronicle, L.A. Times, Des Moines Register and Omaha World Herald have all reported on what the first-named called the “uproar among small farmers”. McClatchy’s summary confusingly suggests that farms “in part” are not covered by the bill (those already regulated by USDA won’t be subject to the FDA), but it does establish clearly why the main impacts of the bill are likely to be felt gradually rather than immediately:
The bill orders federal agencies to prepare certain food safety regulations. But these highly detailed regulations will be years in the making.
Notably, the bill gives the Department of Health and Human Services three years to establish “science-based standards for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, sorting, transporting and holding of raw agricultural commodities.” These standards could cover everything from manure control and employee hygiene to water quality.
Federal officials must also prepare regulations establishing a tracing system to “identify each person who grows, produces, manufacturers, processes, packs, transports, holds or sells” dangerous food.
More: Greg Conko, CEI, Carter Wood, ShopFloor; on the outcry from organic producers, Reuters and Taylor Blanchard/Charlotte Examiner.
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And their many legal headaches (via Sullum, “Hit and Run”).
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Maclean’s reports on the “thriving black market in Canada for borderline illegal, locally produced foods,” from raw dairy products through illicit cured meats available to those with “the right social network”. “You’ve got to hook up with someone who’s got a hook-up. It’s like buying drugs,” says food writer Chris Nuttall-Smith. “Illegal eggs taste amazing.” (& welcome Hit & Run readers).
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Denny’s as “Public Health Enemy No. 1″, over-salty food as “silent killer” — yes, they really do talk that way at the uber-nannyish (and litigious) Center for Science in the Public Interest [AOL Slashfood, Consumer Law and Policy, Greg Conko/CEI "Open Market"]
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