With America facing a lengthy and possible deep recession and a deficit approaching $1 trillion, policy makers should take a hard look at reforming one of the most wasteful and egregious government programs—the 2008 Farm Bill, which expanded U.S. agriculture support programs significantly, with dire effects. Read more on agriculture policy at CEI.org.
The Code of Federal Regulations has 28 sections on food containers. Metal, glass, plastic, flexible, rigid – if you can put food in it, there are rules for it.
Recent innovations, such as easy-open tabs on cans, have prompted the Department of Agriculture to issue a 13-page update to its food container inspection regulations. If you have some spare time on your hands, you can have a look by clicking here.
President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package creates imaginary jobs, while destroying ones in the real world.
Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:
Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site…
It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.
The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.
The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits…
Two EPA lawyers criticized the cap-and-trade energy bill passed by the House as a scam, noting in The Washington Post that it will be manipulated to profit politically connected corporations and reward certain kinds of pollution, while not cutting greenhouse gas emissions. A similar scheme enacted in Europe in the name of fighting global warming enriched polluters, while not reducing emissions, which actually rose faster in most of Europe than in the U.S.
The Washington Examiner explains how the bill will lead to deforestation, and thus increase greenhouse gas…
A few years ago, environmental guru, Merry Prankster, and Whole Earth Catalog author Stewart Brand caused a minor stir with an article he wrote in the MIT publication, Technology Review. Brand, who was an early advocate of the “back to the land” movement of the 1960s and 1970s, had done some re-thinking, and concluded that environmentalist opposition to things like urbanization, population growth, biotechnology, and nuclear power generation, was wrong and needed to change.
Now, Brand has written a new book, called Whole Earth Discipline:…
A quick point to add to Fran Smith’s excellent post on Sweden’s experiment in labeling food and menus for their carbon footprints: don’t read too much into the labels.
The New York Times notes that “the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.” With that much imprecision built in, if the labels change consumer behavior as much as supporters hope, it’s entirely possible that eco-concsious diets could result in more…
If you sell poultry or livestock, it’s a good idea to weigh them first. Makes it easier for buyer and seller to agree on a fair price.
For some reason, seven sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) deal with the use and maintenance of the scales used to weigh the animals, the people operating them, proper procedure, and finally, weighing the animals again.
Is this really a federal matter? If so, what…
The UK Royal Society’s long-awaited study on improving agricultural productivity and increasing food security was released this morning. Although I’ve only had a chance to skim the report, it seems to have lived up to its promise of eschewing politically correct pop-environmentalism and instead embracing the use of science and technology for producing more food on less land. The report acknowledges that farming is an inherently un-natural and ecologically disruptive endeavor. But, it suggests that a healthy concern for protecting the environment necessitates…
Last week, Bill Gates announced at the World Food Summit in Des Moines that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would be redoubling its efforts to improve agricultural productivity among poor farmers in less developed countries. He announced that the foundation would be making $120 million worth of new grants for agriculture research and development. Importantly, Gates eschewed the politically correct approach urged by major environmental organizations and explained, as Reuters put it, that:
“The fight to end hunger is being hurt by…
Today in the Washington Examiner, James Jay Carafano of The Heritage Foundation makes a strange case for what he describes as the opening of a new American frontier — where it was once closed. The column is highly unconvincing for two main reasons.
First, and most importantly, Carafano seems to imply that there is some direct correlation between food production levels and the number of people working in agriculture:
A report prepared for the G8 in April concluded that global food production would…
Norman Borlaug, the scientist who saved a billion lives by fathering the Green Revolution, died Saturday at the age of 95. His work in developing new crops to feed the world’s hungry in places like India earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Congressional Gold Medal, even though his work was seldom mentioned by the press. Ronald Bailey notes that Borlaug “saved more human lives than any other” person in history.
Borlaug was attacked by some on the…
He may have saved a billion people from starvation, but, if you asked a random sample of reasonably well educated Americans who Norman Borlaug was, they’d probably answer, “Norman who?”
I’ll tell you Norman who. His biographer, Leon Hesser, called him the Man Who Fed the World. Science reporter Gregg Easterbrook called him the Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity. I’ve called him a Modern Prometheus. And comedians Penn and Teller said (well, mostly Penn said) that he was the greatest human being…
Congratulations to Pamela Ronald, a UC Davis plant pathology professor, on winning one of this year’s Science in Society Journalism Awards, sponsored by the National Association of Science Writers. The award is for a column Ronald wrote for the Boston Globe last year, and which was based in part on her wonderful book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetic and the Future of Food, co-authored with her husband Raoul Adamchak.
Ronald and Adamchak, who is an organic farmer, reject the dogma that only…
Until last Friday, it was illegal for certain producers to sell or import U.S. No. 1 grade “Creamer size” (long and skinny) Irish potatoes. Creamer size potatoes are identical in taste, texture, and weight to their stouter, rounder counterparts.
In the Idaho-Eastern Oregon growing region, this led to over $7 million worth of potatoes to go unsold. That’s a lot of uneaten meals. Hopefully the USDA will repeal similar aesthetic restrictions on other types of food. It is bad policy to keep…
On Saturday, The Times of London published a news article under the headline “Organic food is a waste of money”. The hard-copy print edition of Saturday’s Times also, I’m told, featured two pages of price and quality comparisons showing that, in a blind tasting, consumers generally preferred the taste of conventionally produced foods to that of organic foods.
“The most striking finding of our survey was that the organic ranges scored worst, or joint worst, at three out of the four…
In the new movie “Julie & Julia,” Meryl Streep does well portraying the late Julia Child, but one can say Streep also benefits from her subject. The much-loved food author and pioneering television chef had a vibrant personality and passion about preparing food that made millions of Americans welcome her into their kitchens. It’s likely that no matter who played Julia in a biopic, her legions of fans would have flocked to the theaters.
So it is strange that Streep acts so…
People aren’t willing to pay much to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to fight global warming, according to a Washington Post-ABC News Poll. 52 percent said they would support a law that “significantly lowered greenhouse gas emissions” — but only if it cost them less than $10 a month. Only 39 percent said they would support such a law if it cost them $25 a month — which is vastly less than it would actually cost.
In the name of…
Beekeeping in South Dakota is illegal without a license.
If you own cattle and they are at risk of catching scabies, you may want to read up on the pertinent federal regulations. There are a lot of them.
The irreverent and hilarious comedians Penn and Teller have produced another episode of their television show Bullshit about organic foods. Friends of CEI, Ron Bailey and Alex Avery, make appearances. The episode, titled “The Organicsons” blows the proverbial whistle on the alleged “local-ness” or organics:
“Some people eat organic foods because they want to support small local farms – but eating organically might mean you’re getting your food from giant corporations or China.”
Penn and Teller note that they have nothing against giant corporations –…
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