Jacob Grier

In our final installment, Paul advocates the death penalty for cooks who serve trans fats, while I … no, just kidding, we both favor education over regulation. Check it out here, and thanks to Paul and the L.A. Times for bringing this discussion together.

Those of you who’ve been wanting more of a smackdown between Paul Roberts and I won’t find it in today’s exchange, where we agree that there are plenty of reasons to enjoy eating natural, locally grown food — as long as you’re not kidding yourself about the health and environmental benefits. Read it here.

Tomorrow’s topic is foods that need to be banned, so things could get a little more heated then.

In today’s edition of Dust-Up, Paul Roberts predicts the end of food and I call for tearing down export restrictions. Read it here.

Today in Dust-Up, Paul Roberts and I discuss whether or not the FDA has enough regulatory power. You can guess where I come down, but Paul doubts the agency’s efforts too.

On a related note, Peter Van Doren lays down some skepticism about food safety regulation in this Cato Daily Podcast.

Update: Also, whoever writes the headlines at LATimes.com deserves a raise.

Previously:
Back in The Jungle
Don’t blame Milton!

This week in the L.A. Times Dust-Up feature, I’m discussing food policy with Paul Roberts, author of the recently released The End of Food. We take on a different question each day, taking turns on who goes first. Today’s question considers food-borne illness in our produce: is it a major menace or a manageable threat?

This should be a fun discussion. Paul and I don’t agree on everything, as you’ll see in the coming week, but we’d both like to see consumers eating better, fresher food, an end to subsidies for industrial farming, and regulations that aren’t bent to the interests of major corporate players. His book is worthwhile reading for anyone interested in why so much of our food is so bad and how out of touch we are with its origins.

Last week, Pennsylvania Mennonite farmer Mark Nolt was found guilty of selling raw milk without a permit. In California, dairy farmers are fighting strict new regulations that would require raw milk to be as biologically sterile as its pasteurized counterpart, and at least one dairy has faced a federal investigation into allegedly selling raw milk for human consumption across state lines. Why are consumers so eager to buy raw milk, and why are authorities cracking down on the people who sell it to them? That’s the topic of my new article at Reason Online.

As part of my research, I visited farmer Kitty Hockman-Nicholas at Hedgebrook Farm in Winchester, VA. It’s illegal to sell raw milk in Virginia, but dedicated dairy drinkers buy into cow shares to get their supply. By becoming part-owners of cows and paying Hedgebrook to care for them, they ensure a steady supply of the raw milk they crave.

Kitty couldn’t sell me any of her milk, of course, but she was nice enough to provide me a sample jar. After several enjoyable hours spent wandering around her farm on a spring day, watching the animals, learning about her milking process, and being introduced to her cows by name, my friends and I couldn’t were eager to get home and try the stuff for ourselves. One of us was a bit nervous, though. “I don’t know if I can drink this. It came out of a cow.”

“All milk comes from cows,” I said.

“No, it comes from plastic jugs!” she replied. And that’s the way most consumers think about milk these days, living their lives completely disconnected from its origin. Having watched the care Kitty took in milking, however, we tried her product feeling confident that the cows were as sanitary as they get for being, well, cows — a far cry from the many bulk milk operations that feed into pasteurized dairies.

Once we tasted the milk, we were all converts to its superior flavor. Having it side-by-side with ordinary store bought milk made the difference even clearer: the mass-market milk has a processed aftertaste that I’d never picked up on before, but that stands out terribly next to fresh, pasture-fed, unpasteurized milk.

A blind tasting with different friends a few days later brought similar results. One person preferred the standard milk, but the rest of us liked the fresh stuff better. (It helps that Kitty’s milk is unskimmed and therefore has a higher fat content, but that’s not the only factor going into its appeal.)

Visiting the farm was one of the most enjoyable weekend outings I’ve had in a long time. Hedgebrook is occasionally open to the public, and I recommend checking it out if you get the opportunity. Unfortunately, the experience of trying Hedgebrook’s milk is harder to come by. Part of the madness of our current dairy laws is that if Kitty were to sell her product, she would be shut down by the state of the Virginia. Unless the law changes, you’ll have to commit to owning a cow for all its days on Earth or take your chances on the underground black market for raw milk products.

Below the break, more photos from our trip to Hedgebrook…
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I’m in the Detroit Free Press today making the case against Michigan’s proposed statewide smoking ban.

Previous smoking ban writing available here.

The Washington Times published the following letter from me today in response to the asinine comment from last week:

Virginia GASP co-founder Anne Morrow Donley’s comparison of the House’s refusal to ban smoking to a willingness to allow slavery shows an astonishing lack of taste and perspective [”Effort to ban smoking rejected,” 2/15]. Working a second job as a bartender, I’ve often complained of late nights and demanding customers, but it’s never occurred to me to compare these annoyances to the plight of the millions of slaves who were held in captivity, torn from their families, and forced to labor under threat of the lash.

I find her statement personally insulting, too. Given the rapid rates of turnover in the hospitality industry and the variety of smokefree jobs it already offers, I don’t need the government to emancipate me from my masters. Bar and restaurant workers are capable of deciding for themselves whether to work in a smoky environment.

If Donley’s sincere goal is to protect workers from secondhand smoke, there are ways of accomplishing this that are far less coercive than a complete ban. Kudos to the Virginia House for blocking this latest assault on individual freedom.

Update 2/21/08: Link here.

The Virginia smoking ban bills are officially dead today, as opposed to last week when they were only unofficially dead. Even Tim Kaine is throwing in the towel for the current session. My favorite response goes to this lady:

Anne Morrow Donley, co-founder of Virginia GASP, criticized the delegates for putting public health in the hands of private enterprise. “If they had been in government in the 1860s they’d have said each plantation owner can free slaves if they want to,” Miss Donley fumed. “They have no compassion.”

Yes, because working in a bar is just like slavery. Need a light, master?

My previous op/ed on the VA smoking ban, unpublished thanks to the House’s cursedly fast action, is available here, and Tom Firey and I opposed the bills in The Washington Post last month.

I spent much of last night with a friend who’s about to leave Virginia, talking about our frustration with all the petty paternalism tolerated by the NoVa part of the state, so this comes as a welcome piece of good news: A Committee in the House has killed all the proposed smoking ban bills passed by the senate!

The bad news? I was set to have an op/ed debate featured in a major Virginia newspaper on this very subject, with everything already written and ready for publication. I’m glad the House acted so decisively, but would it have killed them to wait a week?

Update: Since it’s very unlikely to be published now, I’ve pasted my op/ed below the break.
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Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section included an op-ed from my Cato colleague Tom Firey and I on Virginia’s proposed smoking ban. Amazingly, we’re against it! The section also featured Reason editors Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie telling Congress to butt out of baseball’s steroid controversy.

January — Craft brewers get cozy with the California government; smoking ban supporters don’t give a damn about pizza delivery drivers.

February — I taste miracle fruit and write this site’s most popular entry ever, 3 Cups does more with less, and a brief return to lobster blogging.

March — Miracle fruit launches me to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, a list of things that might not be UFOs, and little known facts about nutmeg.

April — Pondering Kosher elevators, a happy ending for Barry’s Magic Shop, Aikido in the cold and rain, reasons to tip your barista, and the case for making mail more like email.

May — A moderate defense of the paper coffee cup, why your coffee smells like tuna fish, and a disturbing conversation across the bar.

June — I get a new job, the ABC cracks down on hopsicles, and a magical politician hands out some tasty free burritos.

July — Facebook and social sixth sense; bacon in a chocolate bar ruins my nearly vegetarian day.

August — I put on my Noonhat, the costs of food information, consumers don’t always know what they want to know, and my pal Joel moons Karl Rove.

September — Magic develops IP norms, I consider what’s holding back the DC coffee scene, and a silly stapler post brings in ridiculous amounts of traffic.

October — SCHIP’s hidden cigar tax; camel crickets invade DC.

November — Sova Espresso opens on H Street, debating sexist baristi, and “David Grier” blogs live on NBC4.

December — A dubious cocktail experiment, a night of smoke and steaks, and why we should all raise a glass on Repeal Day.

A slightly altered version of my op/ed with Tom on health care and tobacco taxes appears today at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, along with a local story about an expected decline in long-term revenues and increase in online or out-of-state cigarette sales.

Update: We’re in the Orange County Register, too.

Since I can’t let “David” Grier get all the spotlight, my friend Tom Firey and I have an op/ed today at TCS Daily arguing against SCHIP’s tobacco taxes.

Last roundup of these for a while…

The greening of the rich
Eat an animal to save an animal
Coffee chains battle to be the greenest
National Geographic hopes for better biofuel

Global warming leads to more cats. That’s the claim of Pets Across America, who says warming has lengthened the feline mating season. I’m normally opposed to taking drastic action to fight climate change, but if this dubious claim is true I might have to support some massive CO2 reductions. Or perhaps we could just use the excess kitties as a source of biofuel? Whatever’s cheaper.

On a more serious note, here’s what’s new at A Better Earth:
The new push to revive CAFE standards
Should cities tax car sharing services?
“Choice editing” not an apt choice of words
The “Skeptical Environmentalist” returns
UK food miles debate heats up
Yet another downside to ethanol
Wealth and skepticism
Recycling and incentives
We’re all eating mutants!
Floating nuclear power plant
The Woz on efficient housing

Why ethanol subsidies stick around
Tornado power: crazy, or so crazy it just might work?
Audubon tries out private conservation
Kyoto’s perverse deforestation incentives
London taxes the heck out of SUVs
Get thee to a city
You can’t throw that away!