Corrections and Housekeeping

Corrections

1. I razzed Chico, a discussant in an online forum, for quoting a misleading interpretation of the number of people who are hungry in America. The statistic 38 million correctly refers to the number of Americans who live in households classified by USDA as experiencing, at some time during 12 months, "food insecurity" -- a condition of food-related hardship that is milder than what most people would describe as "hunger." It turned out Chico had read an exaggerated definition of this statistic several posts earlier on U.S. Food Policy, in an otherwise-sensible quotation from the national anti-hunger group, the Food Research and Action Center. My apologies to Chico!

2. In the body of a recent post, I described the State laws that are under threat from recent legislative action in the House as addressing "food safety labeling" issues (by which I meant fairly mild rules that provide consumers with improved food label information about food safety issues, so that the consumer can make an informed decision). While many of the State rules in question have that character, others are more direct food safety regulations (having nothing to do with labeling).

Housekeeping

The comment spam finally got the better of me. I have set the default to include no comments, and will add back the comment feature only on posts that I think may generate especially interesting discussion. This may be all for the best -- readers may be more likely to read and respond to each other's comments if the commenting opportunities are less frequent and more concentrated. I have seen this use of comments work well on other weblogs.