Banning genetically modified (GM) food is just another example of promoters of "incumbent products" seeking to restrict competition argues Calestous Juma in yesterday's Financial Times:
Take coffee: in the 1500s Catholic bishops demonised coffee as "Satan's drink" and urged a ban. It was competing with wine. In its defence, Pope Clement VIII proclaimed: "Why, this 'Satan's drink' is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptising it and making it a truly Christian beverage."
More than a century later, coffee was pitted against tea as the incumbent English drink. To defeat the competition, King Charles II decreed the banning of coffeehouses in 1675 only to revoke the decision two days before it came into effect.
In Germany, coffee was outlawed or its sale severely restricted for economic reasons. "It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors," declared Frederick the Great in 1777.
Historical cases of technological competition were limited in their reach. Today's global economy demands that governments find ways to ensure that the benefits of new technologies are widely shared. Judicial rulings will safeguard the integrity of international trading rules. But they will not guarantee consumer enthusiasm for products that threaten their settled ways.
Calestous Juma was writting about a WTO finding, published earlier this week, that the current European Union moratorium on GM food crops breaches trade rules, click here for earlier post.
Any reason I just got the following message before I posted my (subsequently-edited) comment?
"Your comment was denied for questionable content."
Schiller you're obviously getting the wrong stuff. I have tasted both organic and non-organic over the past few months and the difference between them is obvious. I'm going to keep the taste test going to make sure I'm not imagining it, and extend it to friends as well. And the places I drink it supply it on the menu voluntarily. Starbucks (I've never frequented the place) probably shied away for so long because it costs more - it's a multinational, after all.
Louis: Hard to say on a state-by-state basis but since it was post-new deal I think we can assume that the politics of the time were not particularly libertarian.
Regardless, I don't think it changes my point that protectionism and wilful scientific ignorance are the reasons behind both the illogical ban on GM foods and the equally illogical ban on Hemp cultivation.
Friends,
Coffee is, indeed, chock-full of carcinogens; at the same time, one cup of coffee has as many antioxidants (said to prevent cancer) as one dozen fresh oranges!
Also, on a whim, I bought myself some "Organic Fair-Trade Shade-Grown Coffee." I got whole roasted beans, as I like to grind my own. Fresh-ground makes an incredible difference in flavor.
So I made some of that coffee. It tasted like the awful percolator brew you find in the break room at the rubber tire factory that's been cooking since the end of Wednesday's second shift. Gack! I'd swear off caffeine completely if that's all I had to drink. No wonder international greenie-whacko pressure groups had to force Starbuck's to add it to their offerings. Nobody with taste-buds would do it voluntarily.
oh, if and only if the sand contained gold in the first place.
Thinksy, you have not written one original thought in your post above but cut and pasted, what you think, are relevant opinions.
So why not drop your disguise and appear as Phil Done?
Louis -> Becher [Beccher], Johann Joachim :
1678, went to Holland, sold the city of Haarlem a plan for a machine that would spool silk cocoons.
1679, sold the Dutch a method of extracting gold from sea sand.
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rhatch/pages/03-Sci-Rev/SCI-REV-Home/resource-ref-read/major-minor-ind/westfall-dsb/SAM-B.htm
“Becher recommended smelting silver thalers with sea-sand using certain salts as a flux. The Brabant thalers he used in his demonstrations probably contained small amounts of gold; see Karpenko, Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation, p. 50. Gold can in fact be extracted conveniently from sand with the help of quicksilver – but only if the sand contains gold in the first place!
“(he) launched a scheme in the Netherlands for recovering gold from silver by means of sea sand. There were some ethical questions about this latter venture since Becher left the country before producing the promised gold, taking the funds of those who invested in the enterprise with him. He insisted on his sincerity, however, and returned some years later in the attempt to make good on his intentions. A second failure resulted in yet another alchemist being chased out of town. “
http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/ChemistryRidenour.pdf
The right to free speech on Jennifer's blog, banned 2006.
Roger,
There is but one reason one drinks coffee - and it has nothing to so with taste or thirst.
Caffeine! 🙂
As for the carcinogens, considering the amount of coffee I drink, my age and my robust health, I remain a doubter.
My deceased father, a physician, also did experimental work on laboratory rats and mice. These are bred to be particurarly sensitive, and in some cases a sneeze is enough to have some mice develop cancer. John Brignell goes into more detail on the Number Watch.
But if coffee was a cancer inducing stimulant, I would have expected more coffee related deaths in the mortality statistics.
That said, 35 doppios in seriatum will cause heart failure in most normal individuals. I take 3 cups in the morning and that is it for the rest of the day.
Yobbo,
And what were the political flavours of the US Administrations during that period?
I may add that I am a Dutchman and can trace my family back to 1316 AD around Deventer. That is when the records started, and at that time there were five Hissink families.
Judging from family physical traits, we are descendents of the original Batavi people.
But I never heard of the idiot proposal to turn sand into gold.
As yes we Dutch are excellent Merchants - we were the only Europeans allowed into Japan during the 17-18th centuries for one simple reason - we never mixed religion with business.