Shop at Whole Foods. Spend your Whole Paycheck. That’s the popular description of the upscale grocery store. Last year, in a Consumer Reports survey, Whole Foods tied with Jewel-Osco as America’s most expensive supermarket. Now its prices almost certainly will go up. Whole Foods announced on March 8 that starting in 2018, it will require [...]
Salmon-Lovers Unite: Help Science Trump Politics
If you enjoy the taste and healthy benefits of salmon, and appreciate that it is available to you, you may want to share your thoughts with the federal government as soon as possible. Why? Because the Food and Drug Administration just declared that genetically modified salmon “is as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon,” [...]
Standing Up to the True Mission of the “Just Label It” Crowd
Anti-biotech activists are like zombies in a horror movie: No matter how many times you defeat them, they keep snapping back to life, determined to wreak brand-new havoc. So a month after suffering a bad loss in California on Election Day, they’re shifting their misconceived movement to Connecticut, Oregon, Vermont, and elsewhere. The next engagement [...]
Truth Beats False Food Politics
California voters sent a loud-and-clear message to special interests and anti-biotech agitators last week: Keep your hands off our food. The rejection of Proposition 37, a deeply flawed ballot initiative, shows that an informed electorate can make wise choices about food policy. In the face of a propaganda campaign that relied on junk science and [...]
You Have the Right to Know What California Prop 37 Really Does!
The pistachios I grow on my farm aren’t genetically modified, so I was astonished to learn that if Proposition 37 passes next month, the new labeling law will affect my crop. There won’t even be a good reason for it. Prop 37 would deliver another hard blow in a bad economy–and it will hurt not [...]
A Costly California Food Labeling Proposal
The state of California is all but bankrupt–yet professional activists have figured out a way to send us even further into hock, with a costly food-labeling proposition that will appear on the ballot this November. They want tens of thousands of common grocery-store items to carry special labels that indicate biotech ingredients. The referendum may [...]
Fish Tales in Washington
Now some politicians in Washington think they have identified a threat to the pristine Alaska wilderness. These members of Congress are trying to force the federal government to slow down or stop a technology company that has figured out a way to make salmon less expensive for ordinary consumers. If they succeed, they’ll destroy jobs, [...]
A Call For Common Sense Biotech Crop Regulation
So I always make sure this paperwork is done properly and submitted ahead of schedule. Perhaps you experience something similar on April 15, as you scramble to pay taxes. It would be nice if the government returned the favor by performing important work in a timely manner. Unfortunately, its refusal to do so now threatens [...]
Labeling A Rally For What It Is
Judging from the lack of media coverage, maybe they should organize a rally for the right to know whether anybody showed up. Their protest appears to have been a near-total bust. Here’s the really amusing part. For all of their fussing over labels, these professional protestors struggle with how to describe themselves. The “Rally for [...]
Strangulation By Regulation
That’s because the EPA wants to regulate the dust that farmers produce as they run combines through their fields and drive down gravel roads. Federal bureaucrats seem to have forgotten that food production is a challenging business–and yes, sometimes it kicks up a bit of dust. What’s next? Regulating backyard gardeners who grow the flowers [...]
A Legislative Drought
“We’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,” he said earlier this year. He was talking about the threat of climate change—and the prospect that rising temperatures could cause the Sierra snowpack to melt permanently. This would devastate farms in the San Joaquin Valley. “I don’t think the American public has [...]