Attack On Hawaii’s Genetically Modified Papayas Sparks Debate About Science, Organics And Freedom To Choose
The headline on the Associated Press article by Jennifer Sinco Kelleher reads like a joke — Hawaii’s Genetically Modified Papayas Attacked — but it is a deadly serious matter. It touches on the rule of law, the integrity of democracy, the possible use of a veneer of public policy debate for private gain and a […]
A Different Approach
If we are serious about increasing citrus consumption, this is definitely the way to go: However, the grape people have CÎROC and they also have Diddy!
Costco’s Finished Product Testing May Do More To Satisfy Advocacy Groups Than To Minimize Food Safety Risks
Craig Wilson, Costco’s Vice President of Quality Assurance and Food Safety, is one of the most expert and committed food safety people in the world. We know Craig and have great respect for him. He does not, however, work in a vacuum. Despite the way the issue has been portrayed in the press, Costco has […]
Pretending To Buy Local: Why Is Wal-Mart Ashamed Of Its Important Role In Bringing The Produce Of The Country And The World To Its Customers At A Reasonable Cost?
The Wall Street Journal ran a piece titled, ‘Local’ Grows on Wal-Mart, which tells precious little about what Wal-Mart is doing and an awful lot about how easily reporters get snowed when they don’t know much about the subject at hand: Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which scours the globe seeking the lowest-cost suppliers, is finding it […]
McDonald’s, Happy Meals, Obesity, Produce and the Nanny State
The announcement that McDonald’s would add fruit to its child-focused Happy Meals has brought lots of publicity. From The New York Post, which proclaimed It’s Mayor McFruit,to The New York Times, which celebrated that McDonald’s Trims Its Happy Meal,to the Los Angeles Times, which exclaimed that McDonald’s to make Happy Meals more healthful, most media […]
How Will Your Employees Do On The Summer Food Safety Quiz?
The University of Nebraska is a wonderful source for food safety tips that consumers can use. We’ve featured its work before with pieces such as Top Ten Food Safety Myths Slideshow. With summer here, Lisa Franzen-Castle, an Extension Nutrition Specialist, and Alice Henneman an Extension Educator, came up with a slide show quiz, titled, Test […]
E. coli Special Report Translated Into French
From time to time we’ve been fortunate to hear from experts overseas that they have found our work sufficiently valuable to merit translation to allow for a wider audience. We are always humbled by these requests for permission to translate. For example, our piece for The New Atlantis, titled How to Improve Food Safety: Aggrandizing […]
From Father To Son: A Letter Upon Beginning Sleepaway Camp
As his Father prepared to leave, Junior Pundit Primo, aka William, age nine, gave Dad a hug and, with that, he turned to eating lunch. Visiting day at summer camp is in just three weeks, and yet as I hugged him back I knew I would never hug the same child again. As Adam and […]
Remember When? New Study Shows That Memory Can Be Affected By Peer Pressure
A really fascinating study done at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, in collaboration with University College London in the UK, has interesting — and mostly scary — implications for advertising, marketing and society at large. The question researchers were studying is whether social pressure can create false memories. This is a different question than whether […]
Industry Education Efforts Moderate The Damage, But The Media Can’t Resist EWG’s Annual ‘Dirty Dozen’ Stunt
We’ve written in the past pieces such as this and this about the Environmental Working Group’s annual publicity stunt of releasing a so-called “Dirty Dozen” report that purports to identify the produce items that have the most pesticide residues on them. The annual stunt is self-evidently silly as it does not purport to actually measure risk […]
