Archives for the 'Food Law' Category
Europe Lifts ‘Wonky’ Ban on ‘Bonkers’ Regs (or is it ‘Bonkers’ Ban on ‘Wonky’ Regs?)
British grocers and tabloids helped lead the charge to lift a decades-old European Commission ban on imperfect-looking foods, according to The Sun.
Sainbury’s spokeswoman Lucy Maclennan said: “We are delighted to have played a part in winning the wonky veg war against these bonkers EU regulations.”
Tesco spokesman Adam Fisher said: “It’s not before time. We welcome this move.”
And last night it was predicted the change could see some prices fall by 40 PER CENT.
More here. We here at Crispy let you know about plans to lift the ban last June.
And He’s Not a Real Cap’n, Either
Judge dismisses lawsuit by California woman. Says reasonable consumers know the difference between berries (strawberries, blueberries, and the like) and Crunchberries.
The plaintiff, Janine Sugawara, alleged that she had only recently learned to her dismay that said “berries” were in fact simply brightly-colored cereal balls, and that although the product did contain some strawberry fruit concentrate, it was not otherwise redeemed by fruit. She sued, on behalf of herself and all similarly situated consumers who also apparently believed that there are fields somewhere in our land thronged by crunchberry bushes.
Which should leave the Cap’n free to return to his gig as the nation’s most prolific roof-of-the-mouth cutter. More at Lowering the Bar.
Texas trans fat blues
This is a bad week for consumer freedom in my native Texas (where, incidentally, I enjoyed two chicken fried steaks, barbecue lunches, a Tex-Mex feast, several bottles of Shiner, and Dublin Dr Pepper this weekend). The statewide smoking ban looks very close to passing and the Senate is considering a bill to ban trans fats from restaurants. The AP lists the exceptions included in the latter bill:
But, fearing a backlash from the sweet tooth lobby, the lawmakers provided an exemption for trans fats used to make cakes, pies and other bakery items.
“The icing exemption,” is what Democratic Sen. Eliot Shapleigh called the loophole, explaining that cake icing doesn’t stay put without the hydrogen pumped into the oil - the very process that makes trans fats unhealthy.
Other exemptions were provided for food served by grocery stores, fire departments and certain caterers, and the ban would be slowly phased in. Initially, it would impact only chain establishments. It would apply to all Texas restaurants by late 2011.
Another loophole - for nonprofit organizations - was inserted in part to ensure that corn dogs and other fried goodies served at rodeos and state fairs could still be cooked with trans fat.
And, of course, consumers could still by entire tubs of shortening at the grocery store if they’re in the mood. All of which shows the absurdity of this ban. If trans fats are a dangerous toxin, they shouldn’t be allowed at state fairs or catering events. But they’re not toxins. They’re just another food ingredient, and there’s no justification for forbidding restaurant chefs to use them when they’re readily available elsewhere.
If the Texas legislature insists on doing something about trans fats, it should follow the lead of San Francisco. The city allowed restaurants to apply for seals certifying them to be trans fat free, thus preserving choice and giving consumers the information they might wish to know. Unfortunately, that sensible idea was made irrelevant by California’s statewide ban.
Hot Links: Sweet and Salty Edition
- Labels mandated by the Country of Origin Labeling laws that went into effect in March are beginning to appear in stores.
- A recent Wall Street Journal Health column chastises Americans for consuming too much salt. In other news, Connecticut-based writer tells Journal columnist to shut the hell up.
- Confectioner makes candy that looks like bacon but tastes like… strawberries.
- Pepsi unleashes two soft drinks for the summer containing beet and cane sugars. Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, which — alas — feature no psychedelia on their bottles, are intended to return consumers to an Age of Aquarius before HFCS harshed our trip. Ride the snake!
- Tiki comes to DC. Let the drunkening begin.
Crispy Podcast Episode 8
This podcast comes courtesy my presentation at the twelfth annual conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, which took place earlier this month at Suffolk University Law School in Boston.
I sat on a panel on food, law, and culture that was chaired by Prof. Chris Buccafusco of University of Illinois Law, and that featured Prof. David Caudill of Villanova Law, me, and two others.
My presentation, based in large part on work I did as a legal intern at the Center for Consumer Freedom this past summer, focused on the evolving legal strategy of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the nation’s most aggressive, aggravating, and controversial nutrition nannies.
We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ll tell us what you think. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show for free. You can grab the RSS feed or click here to subscribe in iTunes. That way you’ll get it every “week.”
April is National Grilled Cheese Month
…you know what to do. Make miracles happen.
One slightly unorthodox suggestion: Grilled Cheese and Jam
Calorie counts come to Oregon
“To better understand this movement against fast foods, one has to appreciate first of all that many individuals do not like fat persons.” — Gary Becker
A calorie count mandate may be coming to Oregon. Newly introduced legislation would require all restaurants operating in Oregon that have more than 10 locations nationwide to publish calorie information on their menus. Multnomah County, which contains Portland, already has similar rules going into effect on March 15, so the impact will be somewhat mitigated by the fact that many of these restaurants will already be forced to comply. Nonetheless, there are many reasons to oppose this bill.
Continue reading this post »
Senseless threat to Ethiopian microlots
From George Howell via Tim Wendelboe:
[...] the Ethiopian government determined a few months ago that all availability and traceability of individual coffee lots be scrapped. Regional coffee lots were to be graded by the government’s designated authorities and then lump-blended into large trademarked lots. You could buy Yirgacheffe Grade X and know nothing more. This adds value? After strenuous protests from shocked exporters the government relented somewhat: cooperatives could operate independently and retain traceability but not so with any private mills - who often paid farmers for their cherry more than many coops! So this means, as things stand now, that the organic superb Ademe Bedane we currently have will not be available as new crop this year. Even if they produce a lot as refined and flavorful as the one we currently have, tough - it will be dropped into the leveling sea of other lots all ideally from the same region, but in no way required to be. This is commodity thinking at its worst, the very way to guarantee there are no “Ah-hah!” moments that really determine why certain regions become stars commanding higher prices. We pray Ethiopia will relent even at this late time in the current season. Specialty coffee exporters, when recently protesting, were told they were irrelevant because specialty represented 1% of Ethiopia’s sales. That’s vision!”
This is tragic if accurate. Ethiopia grows some of the finest coffees in the world, and even after years in the industry tasting a new microlot from, say, Aricha can be a mind-blowing experience. It’s senseless to dump them into aggregated lots that, even when very good, don’t have the distinct flavor profile of an outstanding microlot.
I haven’t seen much coverage of this issue so I’m at a loss as to why the Ethiopian government has implemented the policy. It might be part of its strategy for preventing dilution of its regional brands, or it might be that the market for distinguished microlots is just too small to care about. Regardless, the new rules will block trade between farmers and bean buyers who’d gladly pay them a premium for their coffees and deny consumers some of the best Ethiopia has to offer. In the long-run this seems likely to hurt the country’s reputation, giving a competitive advantage to origins that are more transparent and able to reward their highest quality growers. I hope exporters and farmers can apply enough pressure to force a change.
Bottled Watergate?
Forget unpaid taxes and illegal nannies, there’s a new ridiculous scandal in town: Possession of…bottled water?:
This week, the City Insider spotted an almost empty case of bottled water in the back of [San Francisco] Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hybrid sport utility vehicle as it was parked in front of City Hall. At least one full bottle of Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water remained under the plastic covering.
Newsom has no one but himself to blame for this one, though. He issued a bottled water fatwa in 2007:
This from the mayor who in June 2007 issued an executive order directing city government to no longer purchase bottled water, saying the containers clog landfills while the city owns a pristine reservoir in the Sierra Nevada that produces some of the country’s best-rated tap water.
Newsom wasn’t short on real scandals to begin with, but will Bottled Watergate bring him down?’
New Law Protects Customers from Murderous Restaurateurs, Peanuts
A new Massachusetts law sponsored by the marvelously named state Sen. Cynthia Stone Creem (D-Middlesex and Norfolk) aims to protect food allergy sufferers from the scourge of restaurants keen to kill their customers, and restaurants from the scourge of allergic customers keen to kill themselves.
In addition to basic awareness-raising poster and video mandates, the law contains this forehead-slappingly stupid requirement:
Every person licensed as an innholder or common victualer, when serving food, shall…include on all menus a notice to customers of the customer’s obligation to inform the server about any food allergies.
That’s right: The law requires restaurants to use their menus to remind people whose throats will close up upon encountering a peanut to ask if there’s any peanuts in their food. Really? We needed Sen. Stone Creem to make that conversation happen?
The law graciously allows restaurants until January 1, 2010, to add the warning sentence to their menus. Meanwhile, allergy sufferers will likely be dying in droves, without that vital reminder to ask if the food they’re about to eat will kill them.
There’s also a voluntary program where restaurants can create a book with all the ingredients they use in every dish and thus be certified “Food Allergy Friendly.” Hilarious syntax aside—are the restaurants pro-allergy?—this program is a classic example of legislation that need not be. If restaurants want to make their ingredients list available and advertise that to allergy sufferers, more power to them. In fact, Chef Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger, who has been pushing this legislation for years, already does this at his restaurant.
***
My former boss and New York Times science columnist John Tierney like to tell this tale of pro-regulation bias in the media:
I once sat in on a newspaper story conference the day after an armored-car company was robbed of millions of dollars bound for banks. The first idea that came up for a follow-up story was: Does this robbery show the need for stricter regulation of armored-car companies?
We kicked this idea around until I suggested that companies in the business of transporting cash already had a fairly strong incentive not to lose it—presumably an even stronger incentive than any government official regulating their security arrangements. That story idea died, but not the mind-set that produced it.
This goes double for legislators.
Via Mike Riggs
A “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds”
More from the Dept. of Eating Strange Beasties:
A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.
Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester’s buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.
Scientists had suspected the species—listed as “data deficient” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2008 Red List—was extinct….However, the buttonquail is from a “notoriously cryptic and unobtrusive family of birds,” according to the nonprofit Birdlife International, so the species may survive undetected in other regions.
He did not add: “Also, they are delicious with a little cumin, so I sort of understand why you’d want to eat the last one.”
The whole thing is reminiscent of the pretty great/terrible 1990 Marlon Brando/Matthew Broderick movie The Freshman, which features a club of the ’80s ultra-wealthy organized around consuming the final specimens of endangered animals while wearing velvet mini dresses and black tie.
Clark Kellogg (Broderick): But it’s an endangered species!
Carmine Sabatini (Brando): Not any more. It’s in New Jersey, it’s fine.
Rent it today, and enjoy the next best thing to roasted endangered buttonquail.
Free the Roquefort! Free Trade!
Got this email today from the proprietor for Cheesetique in the Del Rey neighborhood of Alexandria–a cri de coeur in defense of imported Roquefort in the face of a new 300 percent tariff.
My mouth dropped open this morning while reading the Washington Post. No, it wasn’t over the section about the proposed Buy American stipulation requiring that all new stimulus projects be completed using only American goods and equipment, though I’m sure Thomas Jefferson, owner of the illustrious words, “The exercise of a free trade with all parts of the world [is] possessed by [a people] as of natural right” and Ronald Reagan, who said, “Our trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets. I recognize … the inescapable conclusion that all of history has taught: The freer the flow of world trade, the stronger the tides of human progress and peace among nations”, rolled over in their respective graves.
I was shocked and awed not by that cavalier attack on our broad free-trade liberties, but by the specific violation featured prominently on the front page (albeit below the fold): little old Roquefort is under attack! That sublime product of lactation, coagulation, and fermentation has always held a special place in my heart, despite its high price tag and limited availability. Not only do I have a particular affection for Roquefort, but so do Cheesetique’s discerning customers, who marvel at its romantic story of creation, rustic approach to production even today, and exclusive availability. Your love of raw milk Roquefort has made it a staple in many of my cheese classes and one of the most popular and consistent sellers at Cheesetique. Since opening our doors more than four years ago, we have never been without Roquefort Papillon (I prefer this brand above others, though we have also carried Carles, which is outstanding). We have sold hundreds of pounds of Roquefort despite its title as the most expensive cheese consistently carried at Cheesetique.
To sum up today’s article on Roquefort, the Bush administration recently imposed a 300% tariff on the importation of this rare cheese as a form of retaliation against the EU’s refusal to import America’s hormone-laden meat. Obviously, Roquefort is a TEENY TINY portion of imported food in the US, so why pick on this poor little cheese and, by association, the 600-person town of Roquefort? It’s called symbolism, my friends. Roquefort, like foie gras and truffles, simply says, “France”.
Why do I focus today on this seemingly insignificant example of protectionism at it worst when there are such large-scale issues to consider in our tumultuous time? For that reason exactly. There are so many huge examples of economic policies gone awry, totaling billions and trillions of dollars, and for that very reason, I point out this easily identifiable, but no less extreme violation of the American ways of free choice and trade.
As our own form of culinary protest, Cheesetique will continue to carry Roquefort until it is no longer available, which I assure you, will only be a matter of time. Not only will we continue to carry it, but its price will never exceed that which we pay for it. We encourage those of you that might have shied away from this pricey perfection in the past to come in and pick up a piece of one of the most historically significant and perfectly created foods in the world – at $20.00 per pound. Yes, you read correctly. $20 per pound.
Remember: Protectionism is bad. Roquefort is good. Long live the latter!
Why Buy the Cow?
From today’s Wall Street Journal front pager on the stimulus bill:
Dairy and beef cattle producers butted heads over talk that the government might buy up dairy cattle for slaughter to drive up depressed milk prices.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the image of families scrimping and saving to buy milk for the children a classic Depression tale of woe? Here we are, with the 1930s foremost in everyone’s minds, and we’re going to legislatively order the deaths of a bunch of cows in order to keep prices high as a favor to a small but powerful group of dairy farmers?
Who will think of the children?
The Fruit(cake)s of Our Labors
Mr. Melton, I disapprove of what you bake, but I will defend to the death your right to bake (and sell) it.*
Shasta County health officials are cracking down on an 86-year-old disabled World War II veteran who has been selling homemade fruitcakes for more than a decade.
The Department of Environmental Health cites an obscure law banning food businesses in private homes.
Jack Melton of Redding gave away many of his pecan-filled fruitcakes. But health officials saw a small handmade window sign offering some for sale.
Health specialist Fern Hastings says Melton must use a commercial bakery that has passed a health inspection even if he gives his cakes to the public.
Melton says the 10- to 14-dozen fruitcakes he sold each year helped supplement his Social Security benefits.
* Fun fact: The orginial formulation of the phrase was not really Voltaire’s, but a snappier paraphrase of his thoughts by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
An Oregon smoking ban prediction
I’m supposed to be in Houston right now. Yesterday my bags were packed and, despite being skeptical that my plane home would depart on time, I trudged my luggage through the freshly fallen snow to the train that would take me to the airport. The train wasn’t running. I checked my phone and now neither was my flight. Thirty minutes on hold with Southwest booked me a new ticket on the 24th and three more days in a paralyzed city.
This is all mildly inconvenient for me, but it’s hell for people in the service industry. December is a vital month for them. Because of the record snowfall — the highest for a Portland December since 1968 — my bartender friends are being told not to come into work. Many places aren’t opening at all. Companies are canceling their Christmas party reservations, taking with them all the revenue they’d promised. Combine this with the national recession and 2008 is turning out to be a glum year for area bars and restaurants.
What does this have to do with smoking bans? Oregon’s goes into effect on January 1. By January 2010, the economic uncertainty we’re facing now will hopefully have subsided. And unless it’s another freak year for weather, December will bring its usual boost to Oregon restaurants. If that happens, smoking ban proponents will be able to cite statistics showing that bar and restaurant business went up after the smoking ban, “proving” that they were right and we who oppose the ban had nothing to worry about.
A similar dynamic played out in New York City in March, 2004, a year after the beginning of its smoking ban. The city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a report showing that the bar and restaurant business had grown in the year following the ban. Critics countered that the study misleadingly conflated bars and restaurants and neglected to account for the economic recovery following the 9/11 attacks.
Who’s right? I don’t know and I don’t care. As I’ve said before, this is a stupid argument. The financial objections to smoking bans aren’t based on how they affect net hospitality industry revenues, but on how they impact individual smoking-oriented businesses. Generalized statistics obscure the impact on bars that can’t get an exemption, lose customers, and justifiably feel like their rights are being trampled upon. It’s cold comfort to tell them to suck it up because, well, at least their competitors are making money.
If 2009 is a decent year for Oregon’s bars and restaurants, I predict that this is the kind of claim we’re going to hear from local ban supporters. I’d like to go on the record now to point out that such crude analysis should be seen for the irrelevant BS it truly is.
