Archives for the 'Banned' Category
LA City Council Pretty Much Gives Up On Even Trying to Make Any Sense
So reports SoCal Public Radio.
The Los Angeles City Council…. has unanimously approved new steps to limit stand-alone fast food chain restaurants.
In the 30-square-mile area that includes West Adams, Baldwin Village and Leimert Park, L.A. City Councilman Bernard Parks says 70 percent of current restaurants are fast food outlets.
“The rest of the city is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40 percent,” says Parks. “So, we think we need to give other options if we’re really concerned about the health of our community. Particularly a community where about 60 percent of the people have no health care.”
And, though Parks fails to mention, a community where upwards of 1 in 4 residents are unemployed, according to a 2008 report issued by the mayor’s office. Way to figure out a means to ban new employment and the means for residents to pay for healthcare, LA City Council!
Meanwhile, the council is also tackling the city’s hunger problem in heroic fashion. As the LAT notes, the city is dealing with its hunger problem by implementing a plan where
tons of surplus food from city-sponsored events would be donated to the needy each year under a new policy enacted Wednesday by the City Council.
That’s a nice sentiment. Better than the food going into the rubbish bin. No doubt.
But tons of surplus food? Tons? The city buys tons more food than it needs each year? The same city that’s facing a huge debt crisis? The same city that built a new $578-million public high school and is proud owner of an empty $74-million jail? That city? The city that couldn’t, oh, decide to simply stop buying tons of extra food on taxpayers’ dime each year? Yeah, that city.
Michelle Obama and USDA Teaming Up to Ban Bake Sales?
Ridiculous. Indefensible.
In that spirit, look for a totally disingenuous defense from Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 5, 4, 3…
“This is really about supporting parental choice. Most parents don’t want their kids to use their lunch money to buy junk food. They expect they’ll use their lunch money to buy a balanced school meal.”
Suggesting that taking a choice away is in fact “supporting” choice–as Wootan does here–makes me wonder if she and CSPI are even aware of the fact kids and parents alike still read Orwell.
Anyone who’s the least bit surprised about all this bake sale banning hasn’t read my Chapman Law Review article, The “California Effect” & the Future of American Food.
In 2005, also under the guise of combating obesity, California legislators established school nutrition guidelines that went into effect in 2007. These guidelines have had their greatest impact on one of America’s most beloved, civic-minded, and benevolent youth-fundraising activities: bake sales. Since there is no way to regulate ingredients used in foods made at home, schools throughout the state have banned cupcakes and brownies and, as one school newspaper put it, turned “birthday cakes into contraband.”
Believe me when I say I take no pleasure in the fact that the latter of the basic premises behind the article–that America owes its best food and worst food laws to California–continues to prove itself true.
NYC Nannies Shutter Underground Eatery
A predictably sad ending to an underground restaurant in NYC:
Patrice Carter and Doreen Simpson tasted the love. Albeit briefly.
Their in-boxes overflowed with e-mail in early October, just days after City Room visited A Taste of Hawthorne, the West Indian-inspired restaurant run by both women out of Ms. Carter’s backyard in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn on Saturdays and Sundays.
Neighbors who had enjoyed the women’s inexpensive salmon sliders, sweet potato fries and intimate dining atmosphere piled on praise. Hungry strangers said they were eager to stop by for a bite.
So what went wrong? If the suspense is killing you, then you don’t know a thing about NYC regulators.
The health department, it would turn out, was less enthusiastic.
In an e-mail message Oct. 5, the agency asked Ms. Carter and Ms. Simpson to “cease and desist” from operating their backyard restaurant, which lacked licensing from the city. An inspector followed up with a visit to Ms. Carter’s home a few days later.
More here. Earlier press coverage of A Taste of Hawthorne here, here, and (especially prescient!) here.
Cops Shut Down Kids’ Bake Sale
San Francisco Regulations Devastate City; Male Nurse Oblivious
Last month I had to explain to a male nurse from San Francisco why I think his fair city (and state) is hostile to business. When I first made the claim, he looked at me like I had five different colored eyes. He seemed unmoved, even as I rattled off some good examples from the world of food.
You can lead a nurse to water, but… whatever.
In any case, dude, in the event you happen upon this blog I want to ask that you maybe read your hometown newspaper on occasion. Like now, for example.
You have probably heard the expression: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Apparently that’s the new motto of Ike’s Place.
On Wednesday a San Francisco Superior Court judge ruled to evict the popular Castro District sandwich shop. The result – record crowds.
“I had my busiest weekend ever,” said Ike Shehadeh, the owner and founder. “We turned over 4,000 sandwiches. The line was two hours to get to the door and then 30 minutes for a sandwich.”
The story of the little sandwich shop that has become too popular for its own good just keeps getting more surreal. At a time when small businesses are going belly-up in the city and boarded-up storefronts blight business streets, Ike’s is a homegrown, booming success story, created by a kid who was born and raised in San Francisco.
Better shut him down.
Now honestly, there are some problems. Granted, Ike’s doesn’t have the right permit for a restaurant. Admittedly, the long lines can be a problem. Cooking smells do waft over the neighborhood.
Shehadeh is fighting his eviction, but he is also touring other potential locations in towns where he says city officials say, “We want you to know you are not going to have the problems here that you had in San Francisco.”
But unless there’s a stay of eviction issued by the San Francisco Superior Court, the sheriff will shut down Ike’s on Aug. 26.
More here (including lots of embedded links). For a look at the sorry state of the whole state (foodiewise), check out my article on California’s various crackdowns on its wonderful foods here.
No Fair! Law Cancels Oregon Fair’s Home Brew Tastings
Oregon, a state home to arguably the best beer in the country,** has decided to re-read a dumb old law on the books in such a way that puts the kibosh on home-brewed suds.
The Oregon Liquor Control Commission’s new interpretation of an old law has put homemade beer and wine in the spotlight, effectively banning judged competitions, home-brewing club tasting nights and even the taking of a six-pack of home-brewed beer to a neighbor’s barbecue.
At issue is ORS 471.403, a statute that forbids the production of alcoholic beverages by anyone not licensed by the OLCC. It “does not apply to the making or keeping of naturally fermented wines and fruit juices or beer in the home, for home consumption and not for sale.”
Citing the new interpretation of the phrase “home consumption,” the Oregon State Fair has canceled this year’s beer and wine competitions, and local homebrewers are not happy.
“This will come at a great cost to the state,” predicted Capitol Brewers President Richard Olson.
State fair organizers could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Olson said group members are disappointed but are taking a wait-and-see approach.
“It’s just something that has to be dealt with,” he said. “I know the national group, the American Homebrewers Assocation, is looking at (the new interpretation).”
Many of the local club’s members have brewed beers specifically for the state fair contest and other competitions throughout the state.
The beer competition had been a fixture at the fair for 22 years, the wine contest for 31 years.
“It’s such a tradition,” Olson said. “It’s been going on so many years.”
More on the law from the the Statesman Joural here. Read the sad cancellation note at the state fair’s website here, and the ridiculous law itself here. And note that another provision in the same law (ORS 471.405) mandates that anyone convicted of having illegally possessed, bought, sold, or transported any alcohol beverage in the state
shall forfeit to the [Oregon Liquor Control Commission] the alcoholic beverage so purchased or imported. The commission shall thereupon seize the forfeited beverage and it shall then become the commission’s property.
And the commission members shall, presumably, like a thirsty but not-so-fussy ass, thereupon consume the forfeited beverage.
Fortunately in the face of such idiocy has sprung up the Oregon Home Brewers Association, a group that’s working with friendly legislators to overturn the law in the next session. More from the OHBA here.
**Bridgeport cask-conditioned IPA on tap is the best beer I’ve ever tasted.
CSPI: McDonald’s Just Like the Old Man in that Book by Nabokov
When a stranger offers candy to an unsupervised child, society rightly recoils. Everyone–even the offending stranger–knows this is creepy, objectionable, and probably illegal conduct. The child is too young to consent to receiving the candy, the stranger may have some dark motive, and the parent is not present to consent or–better still–to beat the living crap out of the stranger.
When a stranger offers to sell a hamburger to a child whose parent has brought said child to a hamburger shop, who stands aside his parent, and whose parent agrees to exchange money for the hamburger, society rightly rejoices. The parent consents, the hamburger seller has no motive but wage and profit and (possibly) seeing a happy child, and the child, parent, and seller are pleased with the transaction. This is voluntary commerce, one of the things that makes America such a great place.
Any child whose parent has schooled him in the maxims of a) refusing to accept things from strangers and b) doing as the parent says–things parents teach children as soon as tots are capable of understanding language–knows this.
And yet the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the nanny-state group that’s headed by an MIT-trained Ph.D. microbiologist, no less, fails to grasp the concept. And that’s why CSPI this week threatened to sue McDonald’s. In CSPI’s words, the fast food chain has “fail[ed] to address the insidious use of toys” in marketing its food.
CSPI very clearly and steadfastly refuses to differentiate between the parent buying a hamburger for his child at McDonald’s and a candy-wielding, trenchcoated pedophile in a park. Here’s CSPI head Michael Jacobson at HuffPo:
It used to be that parents warned kids to run away from strangers offering candy, but companies have made an end run by laundering their perfidy through electronic media.
And here’s blowhard CSPI litigation director Stephen Gardner, the only person (to my knowledge) ever to be sued by Kellogg’s for slander, quoted in the LAT:
“McDonald’s is the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children”
OK. We get it. No similie. No metaphor. Just an equals sign with a hamburger chain on one side and a pervert on the other.
Thankfully I’m not the only one who finds this attack on parenting, childhood, common sense, and culinary choice both underwhelming and offensive. At the WaPo health blog The Checkup, Jennifer LaRue Huget notes
CSPI, ever the scold, seems particularly Grinch-like this time around.
Still, though some find CSPI and its lame scare tactics objectionable, others find the group’s actions aren’t adequate enough. Take LAT columnist David Lazarus, who cites UCLA public health professor Toni Yancey and others for the proposition that government must (emphasis mine)
…significantly limit advertising and sponsorship by companies selling… high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar products.
[...]
Yancey said a good place to start would be government buildings — eliminate all bad-for-you foods and beverages. Instead, make healthful alternatives available. Gradually, if the political will can be found, expand the junk food ban to all workplaces, just as smoking bans spread from the public to the private sector.
Meanwhile, we need to step up wellness efforts to get people to make healthier choices and exercise more. These programs should be funded by levies on the foods that contribute most to obesity, and the obvious place to start is soda.
Just because you and I would pause long and hard before advocating restraints on First Amendment freedoms, economic freedom, and personal choice in the name of untested and likely ineffective obesity-reduction schemes doesn’t mean others like Lazarus will do the same. And so in addition to putting myself squarely on the side of parents, kids, and McDonald’s, I’ll point out to CSPI and its fellow travelers in public-health hysteria and paternalism that countries which already impose serious limits on such freedoms–take China, for example–are nevertheless getting fatter. Unless, of course, this too is the fault of McDonald’s, which is currently running some sort of Shrek meal tie-in there.
Extreme Refreshment Crackdown
I have a backgrounder up at the CEI website today on the FDA’s crackdown on alcohol energy drinks (AEDs). No idea what that means? Think Red Bull + alcohol in a can, such as the cans of Sparks at right. A snip from the article:
Over the past decade, caffeinated energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster have become increasingly popular, both as stand-alone beverages and as mixers for consumption in combination with alcohol. The appeal of these drinks as cocktail mixers has led drink makers to also market caffeinated pre-mixed beverages containing alcohol. Popular brands include Joose, Four Loko, Hard Wired, and many others. The rise of this alcohol energy drink (AED) market segment, however, has drawn unwanted scrutiny from federal and state regulators because of allegations that the products are designed and marketed to appeal to underage drinkers. A movement is now afoot to ban these pre-mixed drinks altogether, on the grounds that combining alcohol and caffeine may be unsafe. Consequently, if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and some self-styled public-health advocates have their way, alcohol energy drinks may soon see their final days.
Although the alcohol energy drink market is fairly small, the FDA’s crackdown on it could have much broader ramifications. The same legal rationale being used to attack AEDs—the argument that the addition of caffeine to certain foods and beverages has not been proven to be safe—applies equally to dozens of other popular products that have been on the market for years with no ill effects, such as many caffeinated soft drinks, coffee flavored liquors, and various foods with added caffeine. Consequently, the FDA’s war on pre-mixed alcohol energy drinks could cause substantial collateral damage in the nation’s food and beverage market.
The FDA came to demonize pre-mixed drinks containing alcohol and caffeine—and sometimes other natural substances like ginseng and guarana—by latching onto a few tangentially relevant scientific studies in a misguided effort to shut down a small, politically incorrect segment of the alcohol beverage market. Worse, the FDA has ignored both history and its own regulations in a politicized effort to crack down on caffeine and alcohol.
Whole thing here.
Quick Bites
White House task force issues report calling for more taxes–including a soda tax–and more regulations to fight childhood obesity. [AJC]
Chinese judo Olympian blames failed drug test on eating too many pork chops. [BBC]
HSUS takes what I hope is just round 1 in its pollution suit against Hudson Valley Foie Gras. [Mid-Hudson News]
British town’s nursery schools ban birthday cakes. [Daily Mail]
Building a better steak, and taking into account its “340 flavor compounds.” [WSJ]
When life hands you foie gras protesters, make lemonade. [NBC Bay Area]
They’re coming for your cheese
In much of Europe, fresh, raw milk cheeses are available and loved by cheese connoisseurs. In the US the FDA requires raw milk cheeses to be aged for at least 60 days prior to sale, which limits our options but is better than nothing. David Gumpert reports that now even that option may be taken away from us:
According to a report in an industry publication, Cheese Reporter, a top dairy official at the FDA, Stephen Sundlof, director of its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) believes that the 60-day aging period “is not effective in reducing pathogens in raw milk cheeses.” There needs to be “some other risk management steps” that could be applied. Sundlof said at a dairy conference last month. What makes him think that the 60-day period isn’t effective in reducing pathogens? A little birdie must have told him so.
A change in the aging period regulation could put a crimp on production of a number of raw milk soft cheeses like brie and camembert, among others. Some producers already struggle with the 60-day aging requirement, since certain cheeses are best sold sooner than that, and letting them age for 60 days simply reduces their viable shelf lives.
Moreover, the FDA isn’t proposing to extend the aging period, but rather to require processing of the milk, including pasteurization of milk for certain cheeses.
Unfortunately the Cheese Reporter story is no longer at the link so I have few details, but this looks like another overreaction from the FDA.
Bag Tax Confuses, Dismays
Washington, DC’s 5¢ tax on plastic bags applies only to stores that sell food. But which ones are those?
The owners of Chocolate Moose, which sells quirky gifts and jewelry as well as candy, were certain the tax didn’t apply to them. Although they received the notice the district sent to all retail food establishments, candy accounts for just 10% or 20% of sales, says co-owner Marcia Levi. “I don’t consider myself a food establishment,” she says. When another store owner asked what she was going to do about the regulation, she decided to call the city, just to be on the safe side. “I explained to them the situation—that only a small part of my business is food,” she said. “They said it does not matter.”
I can’t imagine the headaches this bantamweight bean counting must be inducing in store owners:
Stores keep one cent of every five cents they charge for bags, and two cents if they give customers a credit of at least five cents for each bag (of any sort) that they bring to the store. That provision forced clerks at one local Giant supermarket to intervene in every purchase at every self-check-out terminal to authorize the credit. Under no circumstances, the law says, are stores allowed to pick up the five-cent fee for their customers.
Now imagine your check-out isn’t automated and you have to keep track of how many bags leave your shop so you know how much to pay John Q. Law — or be fined.
At least DC has the manzanas to call it a “tax.” In Connecticut, an identical “fee” was introduced last year by Representative Kim Fawcett but it fell by the wayside once Fawcett, a Democrat, pissed away her political capital voting against gay marriage — this in a state where the Republican governor signed it into law. Fawcett then promptly ran over her own daughter. Man, that was a crazy spring.
A victory for food freedom
Some great news yesterday for Michael Schmidt, an Ontario raw milk dairy farmer who risked jail time challenging Canadian regulators. In a remarkable ruling, the court decided that his program by which customers by shares in cow ownership in exchange for the milk they produce is a legitimate enterprise not covered by existing law. In broader context, it seems an encouraging precedent for allowing consumers to opt out of restrictive safety regulations:
Although it is not illegal to consume raw milk in Canada, selling or distributing violates laws that require pasteurization of most commercial milk products.
The Schmidt case, which began when his farm was raided in 2006, has captivated food-rights academics and advocates in Canada, and around the world, who argue the court’s decision will ripple well beyond the raw-milk community. At its crux, they argue, the case is really about the extent to which consumers should be free to buy foods, however rarefied, and whether constitutional rights stretch as far as the grocery basket, farmer’s market and the people who own shares in – but do not live on – food-producing farms.
[Thanks to Kimberly Hartke for the tip. My article on raw milk for Reason is here, and a visit to a Virginia cow share program here.]
Meat for me, but not for thee
Lord Stern of Brentford, the UK’s climate chief, hath spoken. And he sayeth, “‘Tis not meet for thee meat to eat, for you should not have it. But I have meat and I can it eat, so step aside you’re noshing on my roast and polluting the planet.” Lord Stern is, of course, not a vegetarian. He is , however, an economist.
Whenever I think I should, or in fact do, reduce my meat consumption, something like this comes out. Then I regret having contributed to both global warming and general idiocy by having had beans for dinner, and I go buy a steak ( which, incidentally, is supposed to be a deal now.)
Lord Stern, this steak’s for you!
“Some hae meat and cannae eat
Some would eat that want it
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit!”
HT: L. Coyle.
Nymph Mania
Just when Alabama’s gourmet beer bill was starting to make the state look like a reasonable place to buy alcohol, the local control board has stepped in to ban a wine’s suggestive label:
Wine and scantily clad women may sound like some cad’s idea of a good time, but the combo spells trouble in Alabama, which last week banned the sale of a California-made wine bottle adorned with a naked nymph — helping boost its sales elsewhere in the nation.
Pursuant to the state’s administrative code, the Alabama Beverage Control Board ordered Hahn Family Wines to remove its Cycles Gladiator wines from shelves throughout the state, calling its label “immodest.” According to Hahn president Bill Legion, a small state board in Alabama rejected the artwork last year, but the ruling did not catch Legion’s eye. His apparent defiance of the state’s decision — he claims the paperwork “fell through the cracks” — led to the ban.
“It’s turned out to be a great thing for us,” laughs Legion, who says he’s received calls of support from oenophiles around the world.
The bottle’s eyebrow-raising label was designed in homage to a classic 1890s print ad featuring a lithe, long-haired cyclist clinging to a bicycle shuttling through a starry sky. The belle époque illustration has since become a popular poster, affixed to bike-shop bulletin boards and wannabe road racers’ walls.
Click through to see the label, which I think is perfectly delightful. Maybe Free the Hops will take on prudishness next?
“Illegal Eggs Taste Amazing”
“Famously succulent” homemade summer sausage can only be had under the table in Toronto, reports Maclean’s, in a great quick article about locavore black markets in Canada:
The sausage is verboten because it’s made on the farm, and any kind of meat product must be prepared in a kitchen that adheres to provincial safety regulations, even if it uses meat slaughtered in a government-inspected facility.
The microbial risks taken by raw milk nuts are nothing compared to the legal risks faced by their suppliers.
The farmers who provide foodies with their fix are taking a risk. Last year, a man in eastern Ontario was fined $3,000 for selling un-graded eggs to restaurants. And the Saturday-morning farmer’s cows aren’t even part of the quota system. In Canada, dairy farmers must sell their milk through provincial marketing boards, not on the free market. If caught, she could face serious penalties.
A recent study found that $10 wine tastes better if the drinker thinks it’s $90 wine (“with the higher priced wines, more blood and oxygen is sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, whose activity reflects pleasure”). The same phenomenon is probably at least partically responsible for raptures over illegal duck eggs and summer sausage. The price is only part of the cost, and an egg custard that might land you in the pokey is bound to be more delicious than a legit dessert make from supermarket eggs.
Still, I tried (legal) duck eggs last summer on Long Island, and (controlling as well as I can for my own neurological quirks) I think they they were legitimately above average in their sapidity. It’s shame Canadian farmers have to slip their best customers sausage on the sly.
Via Overlawyered
