Raw milk advocates have gained some ground in the last decade, going from 29 to 43 states that allow some way to sell milk without pasteurization. However, in only 12 states are retail sales of raw milk permitted, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And 19 states ban retail sales outright.
But raw…
Federal food safety agencies were not planning on drafting much in the way of new regulations in 2017, which might turn out to be a lucky stroke.
The only new regulations now on the horizon that are remotely related to food safety will implement the GMO labeling scheme adopted by Congress this past year. It…
Berkeley, CA and Boulder, CO, are among a handful of America’s most liberal cities who’ve both often been accused of never having met a tax they did not like.
Berkeley two years ago became the first city in America to impose a regressive tax on sugary soda. On Jan. 1, Philadelphia becomes the second to…
Ahead of standing for election later this year, lawmakers in most states are getting down to business again. Another 20 state legislatures will convene this week. When added to the dozen that got underway last week, it means that legislative business will be conducted in a majority of the states for the first time since …
The “powdered alcohol prohibition” rose up quickly. Before 2014, according to the bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), just two states had existing statutes that would affect the sale of powdered alcohol products. 
Alaska had a law banning the sale of any powdered form of alcohol which contained more than 76 percent alcohol by…
Perhaps no other organization in the country is better positioned to know the best time for drawing a new map of current state raw milk laws and policies than the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). The bipartisan group, based in Denver, closely tracks state and territorial legislative sessions, and it has chosen…
This week marked the beginning of what’s called “the peaking season” for state lawmakers, and it’s seen some food-safety-related bills moving forward without producing any big trends. The “peaking season” refers to the fact that all but three of 50 state legislatures were in session this week, and that lawmaking will continue at this heighten…
Is it possible that enough cottage food bills got passed to carry the economy through to recovery, that most folks are happy with their raw-milk laws, and that the once-heralded “food freedom” movement never got out of a few towns in Maine (whose names no one can remember now)? State legislatures in California, Montana, Wisconsin,…
Legislators and the rest of the policy crowd that hang out in the state capitols are again coming in for the unsolicited advice from the national editorial writers who want to influence processes on a variety of topics, including food safety. The Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel is warning policy makers against turning the clock back “to the…
I did some quick Google news searches for the Super Bowl and the State of the Union. If you think, as I do, that we’ve heard way more than enough about both of these over-hyped events, you are correct. Google news searches returned 661 million results for the Super Bowl and 533 million for the…
