- Is there mens rea in the tainted-cantaloupe prosecution? [Politico, Marler-backed Food Safety News]
- “Some unanswered questions about private prison quotas” [Paul Gowder, Concurring Opinions]
- “Smoke A Joint, Lose Your Kids” [Radley Balko]
- Senate “Stand Your Ground” hearing postponed [earlier, and check out our new stand your ground tag];
- “From Streaking to Possible Sex Offender to Tragedy” [Free-Range Kids, Reason; related on sex offender registries, Jacob Sullum, ABA Journal]
- Also related: New app for anonymous denunciation, courtesy of the feds: sure, what could go wrong? [Free-Range Kids, FireDogLake]
- Florida prosecutors consider seeking death penalty for pain doctor whose customers overdosed [Sentencing Law, Broward Palm Beach New Times]
Posts Tagged ‘food safety’
Eat, drink and be merry roundup
- More details on my panel discussions on food issues next week at the Heritage Foundation [Monday, Sept. 23] and at Vermont Law School [Friday, Sept. 27];
- “A Ban on Some Italian Cured Meat Is Ending” [Glenn Collins, N.Y. Times] “Market Forces Lead to Better Treatment for Farm Animals” [Steve Chapman]
- “Tempering temperance: Puritan attitudes on alcohol still linger decades after Prohibition” [National Post]
- Dozens of class-action suits: “Bay Area courts center of legal battle against food industry” [Mercury-News]
- “Plain and/or Terrifying Packaging Considered for Junk Food in New Zealand (and Australia)” [Katherine Mangu-Ward]
- If the dangers of rice aren’t enough to alarm even today’s Margaret Hamburg-headed FDA, they’re probably not very serious [ACSH]
- North Carolina: home visits to make sure Medicaid recipient kids are eating their veggies? [Rick Henderson video]
Licensed to grill
CBS New York reports breathlessly on underground dinner parties in New York — people invite strangers into their homes! And charge them money! — and quotes an ex-official who says it should be illegal unless they get a restaurant-type license. [CBS New York (auto-plays video ad), Shackford] Radley Balko, on Twitter: “Reporter astonished that New Yorkers invite people into their homes for dinner without notifying the local politburo.” More: J.D. Tuccille.
Speaking on the nanny state and food policy
I’m back from a speaking swing through Nebraska. At the University of Nebraska College of Law in Lincoln, I spoke about food and drink paternalism as exemplified by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s initiatives in New York, with Prof. Steven Willborn providing a counterpoint from a more liberal perspective. At Creighton University Law School in Omaha, I spoke (as I often do) on the ideological state of the law schools, drawing on my 2011 book Schools for Misrule, with commentary from Profs. Ralph Whitten and Sara Stadler.
Both events were well attended but I was especially pleased at the strong turnout for the talk in Lincoln on food and the nanny state, a new speech I hadn’t tried out before on a general audience. Here’s a description:
The public is increasingly in revolt against “nanny state” interventions, from Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to limit soda sizes in New York, to efforts to ban Happy Meals in San Francisco. Some thinkers dismiss concern about paternalism as merely trivial and personal, not on a par with issues acknowledged as “serious” such as police abuse, free speech, surveillance, and the proper functioning of the legal system. Left unchecked, however, the project of paternalism quickly generates very serious problems in each of those other areas: it gives police and enforcers great arbitrary power, hands a special government megaphone to some speakers while stifling others, funnels uncomfortably personal information into government hands, and fuels abusive litigation. No matter what you think of potato chips, if your interests are in liberty and good government, you should be paying attention.
I’m next scheduled to speak on the food police Sept. 23 at a Heritage Foundation panel discussion with Baylen Linnekin, Nita Ghei, and J. Justin Wilson, hosted by Daren Bakst. Details here. More on my fall speaking schedule here.
Food roundup
- “Farm Free Or Die! Maine Towns Rebel Against Food Rules” [NPR on “food sovereignty” ordinances]
- “How much sense does it make for Detroit to be worrying people will open restaurants without enough parking?” [@mattyglesias]
- Report: undercover cop co-wrote anti-McDonald’s leaflet that resulted in famous UK libel suit [Guardian]
- Quizzed on food policy, post-Bloomberg NYC mayoral hopefuls offer many bad ideas; Republican John Catsimatidis, grocer, proposes regs “that would require new buildings to rent to grocery stores.” [Edible Geography]
- Spontaneous consumer discontent over labeling? No, lawyer-driven: consortium of law firms has sued more than 30 food cos. in single federal court [WLF]
- Private GMO labeling a wave of the future? [Baylen Linnekin]
- “Eight toxic foods: a little chemical education” [Derek Lowe, Corante “Pipeline”, schooling BuzzFeed]
- Obamacare calorie-count display mandate likely to curb menu variety [Liz Thatcher, RCP, earlier]
Food roundup
- Watch on the rinds: consumers protest against Mimolette import ban [Cato interview with Jill Erber of Northern Virginia cheese shop Cheesetique, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Mark Steyn on French and U.S. attitudes toward cheese freedom, earlier here, etc.] “The Inside Story of a ‘Juror Revolt’ in Amish Raw Milk Trial” [Modern Farmer] History of Canadian margarine regulation [more from Steyn, NRO]
- Steve Chapman on the utopian quest for zero BAC driving [syndicated/Reason]
- “In addition to its constitutional flaws, California’s foie gras ban is unenforceable.” [Baylen Linnekin]
- Class actions vs. food and beverage defendants soar, “from roughly 19 cases in 2008 to more than 102 in 2012” [Reuters]
- Beware the kale: “The Terrible Tragedy of the Healthy Eater” [Erica, NW Edible Life]
- Culinary, legal, insurance and scientific aspects of roadkill [Edible Geography]
- “FDA And Caffeine: Selective Regulation By Unsubtle Threat” [Cory Andrews, WLF]
Quest for more expensive food continues
Both houses of the legislature in Connecticut have approved legislation aimed at requiring the labeling of (near-ubiquitous) foodstuffs with genetically modified (GMO) ingredients. The Senate’s version includes an “all jump off together” clause preventing it from going into effect until at least four states have joined in on the idea, which must cumulatively have a population of at least 20 million, and must include at least one state adjacent to Connecticut. [Greenwich Time, Ron Bailey, related (“food companies should just go ahead and slap labels on everything they sell reporting: ‘This product may contain ingredients derived from safe modern biotechnology.'”)] Earlier here (NY Times is surprisingly sensible on subject), here, here, here, etc.
Food roundup
- NYT op-ed: let’s pay folks to cook at home, they’ll never figure it out otherwise [Amy Alkon on Kristin Wartman attempt to revive old Wages for Housework campaign with foodie spin] “You don’t have a moral obligation to cook” [Maggie Koerth-Baker]
- “The Making of the Obesity Epidemic: How Food Activism Led Public Health Astray” [Helen Lee, Breakthrough Institute via Julian Morris] Research suggesting benign effects of slight overweight slammed by public health profs who fear it might complicate desired policy narrative [Nature; more from Trevor Butterworth on Walter Willett vs. Katherine Flegal] Lessons of Denmark’s fat tax [Christopher Snowdon, IEA]
- Will ‘elf-and-safety spell an end to Gloucestershire’s annual Cooper’s Hill cheese-rolling event? [Telegraph]
- Bloomberg’s NYC health dept. can’t find restaurateur to operate a cafe in its headquarters, too many rules [NY Post]
- Curbs on Italian imports relaxed: “The war on salami finally ends” [David Frum]
- Most senseless cheese ban ever? In the case of Mimolette, it mite be [Hans Bader, earlier]
- Diversity in apple varieties has plunged in the past century, right? Maybe not [Alex Tabarrok]
“Dairy farmer acquitted on three of four charges in raw milk trial”
“Dairy farmer Vernon Hershberger was acquitted on three of four criminal charges early Saturday morning in a trial that drew national attention from supporters of the raw, unpasteurized milk movement.” Hershberger sold his products through what he characterized as a consumer buying club, but prosecutors charged that the set-up was too much like a retail store, with price stickers and a cash register; Wisconsin law bans the sale of raw milk products through a retail store. “‘This is as close to Prohibition as anything I have ever seen, but this time it’s milk and an Amish farmer, rather than liquor and gangsters,’ [defense attorney Glenn] Reynolds said.” [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel; Ryan Ekvall, Reason]
“EU to ban olive oil jugs from restaurants”
Traditional refillable open-spouted vessels and dipping bowls will need to give way to “pre-packaged, factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labeling in line with EU industrial standards.” [Bruno Waterfield, Daily Telegraph] In perhaps not unrelated news, a new poll finds Euroskepticism strong in the U.K. [Telegraph]:
When voters are asked the exact question Conservatives want to put to the public in the 2017 referendum, “Do you think that the UK should remain a member of the EU?”, 46 per cent opt to come out, a higher figure than in other recent polls, while just 30 per cent want to stay in.
Update: May 23 (proposal dropped).