{"id":102,"date":"2008-07-23T12:05:59","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T10:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2008-07-23T12:11:12","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T10:11:12","slug":"you-say-tomato-i-say-tomato-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=102","title":{"rendered":"You Say Tomato, I say Tomato.  Let&#8217;s call the whole thing off."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-104\" title=\"Tomato\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/tomato.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"80\" height=\"70\" \/>Switzerland is one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/politics\/foreign_affairs\/Swiss_optimistic_ahead_of_WTO_talks.html?siteSect=1521&amp;sid=9351638&amp;cKey=1216615826000&amp;ty=st\">sticklers<\/a> for the Doha round of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wto.org\/\">World Trade Organization<\/a> talks on agriculture subsidies.\u00a0 We have mountains here, and a good way up some of those mountains are farm animals.\u00a0 It costs a fair amount of money to bring those products to market.\u00a0 Wherever those animals are, farm products are carefully inspected before going to market.\u00a0 Salmonella has not been an issue here. NPR had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=4953604\">story<\/a> on this back in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime it&#8217;s tomato season back in New Jersey and elsewhere in the States, and it has been marred once again by a Salmonella scare.\u00a0 Official warnings have been canceled as of July 21, but a new warning has been issued regarding jalape\u00f1o peppers.\u00a0 Here we go again.\u00a0 U.S. farming practices remain a disaster.\u00a0 Thanks to lax regulation of the food supply we have had repeated scares.\u00a0 Last year it was spinach, with a bunch of <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-106\" title=\"Jalape\u00f1o\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/chile_jalapeno_large.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"118\" height=\"57\" \/>pigs having taken a romp in a California field.\u00a0 What will it be next?\u00a0 People often mention the food supply as a potential terrorist target.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t see why they should bother.\u00a0 The farmers are doing a fine job of poisoning Americans without additional help.<\/p>\n<p>Here is why the WTO is so important in this discussion.\u00a0 The Swiss pay a premium to protect their food supply through tighter inspection regimes and a higher standard of farm practice.\u00a0 Americans do not pay that premium.\u00a0 If the Swiss authorities deregulated their agriculture, they would in effect be reducing their standards for food quality.\u00a0 Perhaps instead Americans should\u00a0 consider raising their standards so that fewer people get sick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Switzerland is one of the sticklers for the Doha round of World Trade Organization talks on agriculture subsidies.\u00a0 We have mountains here, and a good way up some of those mountains are farm animals.\u00a0 It costs a fair amount of money to bring those products to market.\u00a0 Wherever those animals are, farm products are carefully &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=102\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;You Say Tomato, I say Tomato.  Let&#8217;s call the whole thing off.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,30],"tags":[85,84,83,86],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-humanity","tag-food-quality","tag-jalapeno","tag-tomato","tag-wto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}