My newest Examiner post covers the FDA’s draft rules for calorie labeling, which may extend not just to restaurants, but also to convenience stores, movie theaters, and supermarket salad bars — all without much evidence that they’ll do any good.
Improvements in information technology are another reason to doubt the merits of forcing restaurants to post calories directly on menus. Websites like Calorie Lab already provide databases of the nutritional information from more than 500 restaurants. As far as I know they don’t have a phone app yet, but they could easily make one (one competitor already has). As smart phones proliferate it will be easier than ever for consumers to access calorie counts in addition to much more thorough nutritional information about the foods they eat. Yet these archaic laws will still be on the books forcing unneeded clutter on printed menus.
Even better than smart phones, this week Eater takes a look at how iPads are replacing printed menus in a few restaurants. The devices are durable, interactive, can hold a lot more information than a printed menu, and can work with a restaurant’s point of sale system. If desired, an electronic menu could offer extensive nutritional information at the push of a button. They’re cost-prohibitive right now for most restaurants, but in the future we can expect the price to go down and electronic menus to become more common.
It will be interesting to see how the law is adapted for electronic menus. Will calorie counts have to be displayed prominently like they are now, or will it be enough to have them easily available on the device for interested consumers? If the former, that will be another sign this law is intended more to nag people than to provide them with desired information.
New York City is implementing a new system under which the letter grades given to restaurants by health inspectors must be prominently posted and in which further details are available online. This seems like a good thing: The more consumers know, the better the market works. But to some extent this just replaces ignorance about what goes on in the kitchen with meta-ignorance about what the grades signify. The letter grades are only as good as the inspection regime, and if consumers don’t know what the grades mean, then they may not be helpful. An article in The New York Timeslooks at some of the complications:
Under the former system, restaurants received points for each violation; a total score over 28 was considered a failing grade. But under the new system, in which 0 to 13 points gets an A, 14 to 27 points merits a B, and 28 or more is a C, officials have softened some rules, like those governing the temperatures of food held for service. And they will not count certain non-food-related violations, like burned-out light bulbs or improperly posted signs, toward the grade, although operators could still have to pay a fine.
So a restaurant that may have received 15 points under the old rules might score, say, 9 under the new ones, said Andrew Rigie, director of operations at the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group that has been lobbying against the letter grades.
“That’s a big problem,” Mr. Rigie said. A person seeing an old 15-point score on the Web site “would determine that restaurant to be a B-graded restaurant, but there’s a possibility that under the new system it would have an A.”
It’s good that the city is not counting some non-food related violations against the grade, but one has to wonder what else goes into the score. There are 1,200 possible points that restaurants are graded on. Is the difference between a 13-point A and a 14-point B really that meaningful? Or even a 5-point A and a 20-point B? I have no idea, and I suspect that most diners don’t either.
I wrote about this when the new regulations were first announced, noting that the rule:
confuses the measurement with what we’re trying to measure. What we should care about is actual food safety, not the letter grades restaurants are receiving. If the grades aren’t highly correlated with preventing customers from getting sick, then restaurants are just wasting time and money to comply with arcane regulations and to create the illusion of safety.
To this end, making detailed reports available online is a good step. I’m more skeptical that the letter grades will provide useful information. This is the same city, after all, that has cracked down on sous vide cooking and putting egg whites in cocktails (to say nothing of banning trans-fats). Should we trust the experts to identify the most salient concerns with these grades, or should we instead ignore the differences between As and Bs and focus on the worst offenders?
Over at the Examiner, I take a look at the CARE Act, a wholesaler-backed bill that would essentially reverse Granholm v. Heald and exempt state alcohol laws from Commerce Clause challenge.
Gear, for instance, said he was concerned by suggestions that Costco and Wal-Mart would be able to sell liquor in a new system. He said he’s worried the big companies could make it tough for small retail businesses to successfully compete in the market.
“My idea was to create jobs from small operations, mom-and-pop stores,” he said. “Costco can put in liquor and never have to hire a single person.”
As Jacob Sullum notes, “Gear evidently sees liquor privatization as a stimulus program that should be judged by the number of jobs it creates.” And as this blog said recently in regard to Washington brewers’ opposition to that state’s own privatization bill, “markets are for consumers.” They’re not for uncompetitive craft brewers or inefficient retailers. They’re for consumers, and consumers are best served by a system that forces sellers to compete on price, selection, and various other factors.
Fantastic post from Nate McLaughlin, who’s in the process of opening his own Washington brewery, on why he supports I-1100:
For years craft breweries have been saying how horrible the three tier system is and that we need to abolish it. Now here comes the chance to whack away at the Washington Liquor Control Board and the craft breweries decide that they would much rather hide behind the status quo.
[...]
WBG makes claims that this new way of competing will crush all our small breweries. Let’s be honest, these places are not competing with the large breweries that they are worried about being able to “give discounts, free product and services to obtain shelf space or handles at big box stores, chain restaurants, and other retailers.” They really are kidding themselves if they think they don’t already do this. Yes, it is illegal, but no one is making any arrests or sending out fines, we know this goes on and I am not surprised at all. This just makes it legal. But don’t belittle your product, be glad that people have to bribe to get their brand of booze into a place when people are clamoring to get yours in. We’re smarter and more innovative than they will ever be. We can beat them.
One of my college economics professors had a maxim that he drilled into us students: “Markets are for consumers.” Economic logic can help to predict how certain changes will affect people up and down the supply chain, but if you start using that knowledge to protect producers’ interests at the expense of consumers, then you’re doing economics wrong. Markets are for consumers. (The maxim applies to monopolies too. They are problematic because they raise prices or are unresponsive to consumers, not because they wipe out competitors.)
Beer brewers and drinkers opposed to privatization of state liquor sales? Indeed, says Heather McClung, president of the Washington Brewers Guild, which represents the state’s small craft breweries and, roundaboutly, craft-brew drinkers. Her industry is lined up against I-1100 - though still weighing I-1105 - the privatization measures headed for the November ballot and detailed in last week’s SW cover story. “There is something that is being left out of the discussion it seems,” says McClung.
I-1100, for example, is actively promoted as a modernizing of liquor laws, she says, when it’s actually a sweeping proposal that repeals 39 state laws, enabling the biggest retailers, distributors, and producers to own and give favorable pricing to each other. That, says McClung, of Seattle’s Schooner Exact Brewing Company, would eliminate the level playing field that small breweries such as hers need if they are to prosper.
At issue is a section of the initiative that would allow breweries to self-distribute and offer discounts to bulk buyers like Costco, grocery stores, and bars. Beer in Washington must currently sell at a uniform wholesale price: Costco pays the same amount for crates of it that a small retailer pays for a few cases. As a result, beer prices at large retailers are higher now than they will be if I-1100 passes.
Eliminating the uniform price requirement might make it harder for craft breweries to compete with the big beer companies who can offer greater discounts and benefits. Does this make the initiative anti-consumer? Only if you look exclusively at craft beer drinkers. Craft beers currently make up about 7% of the US market (probably somewhat higher in beer savvy Washington). The vast majority of beer consumers will benefit from being able to buy macrobrews at lower prices.
To put this another way, the Washington Brewers Guild is saying that the state should keep beer prices artificially high for 93% of the beer market in order to maintain the same broad selection for the remaining 7% (or whatever the actual figures are in Washington).
Personally, I doubt that the results will be as bleak as the WSG predicts. Craft brews are growing in popularity while macros are declining, and that’s unlikely to change. Smaller breweries are also starting to merge, operating independently while taking advantage of economies of scale. There may be some closures — this is true regardless of I-1100 — but craft beers don’t show any sign of going away.
However, even if I’m wrong, that doesn’t mean this is a bad bill. As much as I love good beer, it would be improper to elevate my preference to force of law. If the only way the current high number of small breweries can survive is by shackling their larger competitors, then we may need to settle for having fewer breweries. I hope that beer drinkers will continue pay more for quality, but that’s their decision to make. Markets exist for consumers — all consumers, not just the ones who like microbrews.
Additional notes: The question of tied houses is complicated, and arguably the matter of most concern. It’s the aspect of I-1100 I would be least confident in supporting.
File this story under the “Brewers Behaving Badly” label, which previously featured California craft brewers lobbying against laws that would allow beer companies to hand our more swag or offer free tastings in bars, Pennsylvania brewers opposing a measure to let consumers buy beer in 18 packs, and Michelle Minton’s coverage of Colorado brewers opposing the sale of good beer in grocery stores.
A net revenue of $163.5 million (fiscal 2008-2009) just from liquor sales was returned to the citizens of Oregon. What retail business can generate net profit revenues of 40 percent of sales? I’d sure like to invest in such a company. Even a wildly successful company like Apple posted only a 19.9 percent net profit margin for 2009, which is far less than what OLCC liquor revenue generated for Oregonians.
And in the same article:
If the citizens of Oregon think that getting the state out of liquor distribution and retailing will reduce the price of alcohol at the checkout counter, think again. I’ve compared retail prices in California and Arizona to ours in Oregon, and except for the best-sellers (less than 10 percent of the inventory) the prices are the same or higher in those states.
So his arguments are that 1) monopoly liquor distribution yields enormous excess profits for the state and 2) introducing competition will increase prices for consumers. If this is the best the anti-privatization side can come up with, I think it’s safe to say the pro-privatization side wins the economic argument.
OK, one quick post from Tales with a couple links. I’m at the Washington Examiner today with a post about why the FDA’s menthol hearings are asking the wrong questions. Then at the Portland Examiner, Hoke Harden has a great (and way too flattering!) write-up of the Brewing Up Cocktails event. If you’re curious about the drinks we served, go check it out.
Law enforcement officials are putting a stop to the home-brew and home-wine-making competitions at this year’s Oregon State Fair.
KATU reported on the glitch in state law that at the time put the home-brewing competition in jeopardy. Late Friday, Oregon State Fair Manager Connie Bradley learned from the Department of Justice that the law requires both its beer and wine competitions to be shut down.
“The issue has to do with the judging,” Bradley said Monday. “Judges are considered the public, and we cannot have the public tasting amateur wine or beer.”
The competitions have been going on for 30 years under existing law. The agencies have just now decided to interpret the rule to mean that allowing judges to taste homemade beers and wine counts as serving to the public.
People actually get paid with tax dollars to enforce these stupid rules. With the state budget in a mess and OLCC privatization an issue in upcoming elections, hopefully this will be one more nail in the coffin of one of our least useful agencies.
Mixologist Todd Thrasher joins forces with my friends at Reason.tv to serve a tasty cocktail and discuss the archaic control and safety regulations that inhibit the craft of bartending:
I’m not sure Todd’s right that the acidity in a drink would be enough to kill bacteria in the short time between when it’s shaken and consumed, but in any case the risk of contamination is very low and we’re all adults enjoying these concoctions.
To make your own Melanie’s Pisco Pipe Dream, visit Crispy on the Outside for the recipe.
No, the headline is not an April Fool’s joke. This week the FDA began its inquiry into whether it ought to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes:
A scientific advisory panel that will advise the Food and Drug Administration on regulating tobacco opened a two-day meeting Tuesday and began reviewing hundreds of published studies on menthol cigarettes. The panel, largely made up of scientists, physicians and public health experts, has a year to make a recommendation to the FDA on menthol cigarettes, which are used by about 26 percent of smokers and make up almost one-third of the $70 billion U.S. cigarette market.
Throughout this process there will be allegations from anti-tobacco groups that menthol cigarettes are more addictive, more dangerous, and more likely to hook teenagers than unflavored cigarettes. These scare tactics neglect to mention that menthol itself is harmless. It’s not habit-forming like nicotine. It’s not dangerous and is used widely in medicinal, dental, and food products. Tobacco companies don’t put it in cigarettes as part of a dark conspiracy to addict people. They use it because it tastes good, is soothing, and consumers want it.
Because of these effects it’s possible that some of the charges against menthol cigarettes are true, statistically speaking. The FDA’s going to spend a lot of time and money sorting this out, but there’s no mystery as to why this is: When a product is pleasant, people consume more of it. They’ll smoke more of them or smoke each cigarette more intensively. They’ll have less reason to quit. Some teenagers will prefer them to unflavored cigarettes, just as about one third of legal adult consumers do. This doesn’t mean that menthols are especially toxic, it just means that people like them.
If this is accepted as a legitimate reason to ban menthol cigarettes there’s no limit to what the government could do next. It could ban other forms of flavored tobacco in cigars, pipes, chew, and hookahs — in fact, New York City has already passed a low doing almost exactly that. It could force cigarette producers to make their products so bland and heavily filtered that no one wants to buy them. It could kill premium pipe and cigar companies entirely, an industry whose purpose is to make tobacco that tastes good and is pleasant to smoke.
And that’s just tobacco. If menthol and other flavors can be banned for “masking” the harsh taste of cigarettes, why not ban flavors that “mask” the harshness of cheap vodka? Or the barrel aging that turns hot white dog into mellow whiskey? Or hops in beer, condiments in fast food, milk and sugar in a venti Frappuccino? As individual health increasingly becomes the public’s business, there’s no end to the unhealthy things we can reduce the consumption of by simply making them unpalatable.
If you read the press coverage of this debate in The Post for example, you’ll see quotes from anti-tobacco activists explaining why menthol needs to be banned. You’ll even see quotes charging that not doing so would be racially discriminatory on the grounds that menthols are relatively more popular among blacks than whites. What you won’t see are quotes from any of the millions of consumers who currently smoke menthols and may soon have that choice taken away from them. The opinions of smokers do not matter; they are assumed to be dupes or addicts incapable of making their own decisions. By portraying them as victims of the tobacco companies anti-smoking activists dodge the consumer rights aspect of this issue. They avoid answering the hardest question asked in opposition to their plan: If a consenting adult wants to purchase a flavored cigarette, why shouldn’t he be allowed to do so?
This is a dangerous road. It’s one thing to forbid sales to minors, to tax tobacco, to require warning labels, and to restrict the sorts of places where one can light up. It’s quite another to take a product off the market simply because many people prefer it. That is pure paternalism; take individual agency out of the picture and it’s a much smaller step to banning tobacco entirely.
This issue is going to drag on for a long time. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it here, but be sure to also follow the excellent coverage of Brooke Oberwetter starting with her most recent blog post.
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.
Having recently banned smoking in its restaurants, North Carolina is now considering a rule change to allow pets on restaurant patios:
North Carolina health officials are proposing a rule change that would let pets come to the table at outdoor restaurants as long as they don’t go inside or do anything else that might contaminate people’s food. [...]
On the other hand, some people don’t think restaurants should open their al fresco seating to patrons who scratch, pant, lick themselves and eat indiscriminately off the ground.
Dyrl Wood of Smithfield, an empty nester now, wrote the state to support Wake’s dog ban, though he had a Brittany spaniel for years.
“But we didn’t take the Brittany spaniel out to eat,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “My view is that you can have them and love them and care for them, and when you go out to eat you can bring them some scraps to have when you come home.
“But don’t require other people to dine with them. It’s unappetizing.”
If the rule change is approved, restaurant owners will be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not to allow pets on their patios. What a concept! It’s amazing how foreign the idea of having diverse policies is to some people. If they don’t like pets, pets shouldn’t be allowed at a single restaurant in the entire state. If they don’t like smoking, smoking needs to be banned. That’s the problem with deciding these matters politically: The “right” decision is forced onto everyone, leaving people who have different preferences with no venues in which to act on them.
For the record, this blog is pro-pooches on patios.
It’s a safe bet that I won’t like any article that begins by praising bans on smoking and transfats, and Ming Tsai’s piece for The Atlantic on Massachusetts’ new allergy regulations doesn’t disappoint. The law starts with yet another requirement for restaurant menus:
First, there has to be a blurb on every menu that asks customers, “Before placing your order, please inform your server if a person in your party has a food allergy.” In addition to promoting safety, this only makes it easier for restaurants to service customers. We’d much rather know about allergies in advance. It becomes a service nightmare when you have to redo a whole meal.
Well, pardon my language here, but no shit. If you’re dangerously allergic to a food item you should tell your server this when you order. This statement doesn’t need to be mandated. Between this, the calorie labels, the admonition to consume no more than 2,000 calories per day, and the warnings about raw meat, fish, and eggs, one wonders what page space will be left for food by the time every health lobby gets their way.
At least this is mostly harmless. The other aspects of the measure might even do some good, adding basic allergy and cross-contamination education to the safety course some restaurant staffers must already take. And Tsai’s optional binder system for tracking allergens in a restaurant’s dishes is a positive contribution. But does the fight for greater allergy awareness deserve inclusion in this paragraph? You be the judge!
Everybody should have the right to be able to eat safely in any restaurant. Going back in history, it used to be that if you had a certain color of skin, you couldn’t go into certain restaurants, then it was if you were a handicapped person you couldn’t go in, and now if you have allergies, you can’t.
This week the Oregon Senate is considering a bill to ban Bisphenol-A, or BPA, from use in products intended for children under the age of four. BPA is a common chemical in plastic containers. There is some fear that it causes harm by leaking into food and drink products. I am skeptical, as I am of most such scares, but I haven’t done enough research on the topic to have a firm opinion either way.
Writing at Blue Oregon, Kari Chisholm is sure that we should pass the ban. In fact he’d like to ban it in all food containers, not just the ones intended for children. Some of his reasoning is based on scientific research but the rest is biased towards what’s good for legislators. Here’s one of his arguments:
Smart legislators will vote for SB 1032. It’s the right thing to do, but it’s entirely possible that it could become a political issue in upcoming campaigns. When our son was born, I had never heard of BPA. But hanging around with a bunch of new parents, I quickly learned about it - and this is a major worry with young families. (Legislators who don’t have young children of their own would be smart to check in with some new parents — they may be surprised how deep the concern runs about BPA. Entire businesses have been built to help parents avoid this chemical.)
Given a choice between protecting the health and well-being of Oregon children - and protecting a bunch of out-of-state (and overseas) chemical and plastics manufacturers - I think the choice is clear. You can imagine what the attack ads will look like for those who vote against the bill.
This also isn’t about jobs. No one in Oregon produces BPA or the products affected by SB 1032.
This might all be true, but there’s nothing praiseworthy in the provincial idea that we should go ahead with the ban because the only people who would be hurt by it are non-Oregonian Americans or foreigners who are likely economically worse off than we are. It’s expedient for legislators to think that way but it’s not a principle we should encourage. (If Oregon was home to a BPA plant, would Chisholm want legislators to ignore science to protect their political prospects?)
Then he updates with this:
Over at the OLCV blog, Jon Isaacs notes that the Bisphenol-A baby-bottle ban is an opportunity for a big bipartisan accomplishment, at a time when there’s been a lot of partisan bickering and stonewalling.
I don’t even know what the point of this is supposed to be. Bipartisanship is only good if the laws that are being passed are good. It’s not good for it’s own sake. If all it does is give politicians something to point to when they’re running for re-election and cover from lobbying groups then I don’t see the value. The same blog post he links to notes that 90% of the bottles for sale in Oregon are already BPA-free anyway, suggesting that concerned parents and retailers are handling the alleged problem reasonably well on their own.
There might be good reasons to ban BPA in bottles, but after reading this Blue Oregon post I’m less convinced than ever that the decision will be based on sound science rather than on the self-interest of legislators.
Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
Jacob Grier is a freelance writer, barista, mixologist, and magician in Portland, OR. He writes, eats, and drinks a lot. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Reason Online, The Oregonian, and other publications.
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