Web Excursions 2021-11-14
The Great Organic-Food Fraud
The real difference, then, between a ton of organic soybeans and a ton of conventional soybeans is the story you can tell about them.
The test, at the point of sale, is merely a question: Was this grown organically?
That’s not like asking if a cup of coffee is decaffeinated.
It’s more like buying sports memorabilia—is this really the ball?—
or like trying to establish if a used car has had more than a single, careful owner.
“It’s a huge flaw in the organic industry that the farmers pay the certifier—sometimes many thousands of dollars.
The certifier has a conflict of interest,
because they really don’t want to blow the whistle on a fraud.”
Constant was, in fact, passing off non-organic grain as organic grain.
The scheme, in which at least half a dozen associates were involved, is the largest-known fraud in the history of American organic agriculture:
prosecutors accused him of causing customers to spend at least a quarter of a billion dollars on products falsely labelled with organic seals.
Constant evidently saw fish farming as an opportunity to reproduce his achievement in grain—exploit a market willing to pay premium prices for qualities that are hard to detect at the point of sale.
There’s currently no such thing as an American organic fish: a wild-caught fish is not an agricultural product,
so the U.S.D.A. has no standing to judge it, and there’s resistance to certifying farmed fish.
So Constant tried to position his product as unusually wholesome, and “sustainable,”
in part by describing himself as an organic-industry pioneer.
it seems like when [the inspector] report things, they’re looking for reasons not to have to investigate
as long as someone is covered with paper documentation you don’t go after them
The World’s Most Professional Whistleblower
Haugen's relationship with Reset,
an anti-tech lobbying shop with operations across the EU, U.K., U.S. and Australia,
also raises concerns about who is driving her push to rewrite Europe's online content rules
For Ben Scott,
Reset's founder and
an outside technology adviser to Clinton’s failed 2016 U.S. presidential campaign,
there is no conspiracy in his group's help in guiding Haugen through the complex world of European policymaking.
His team has spent the last 18 months lobbying EU officials
to impose outside oversight on social media companies' opaque operations.
Where his team stepped in was
to offer suggestions about who she should meet
and pay for logistical support, such as flights and hotel rooms.
She has prioritized meetings with lawmakers in countries already mulling online content rules that could make a difference,
though is open to meeting with politicians from the Global South where online hate can have real-world impact.
Scott, Reset's founder, said she often had rejected his group's suggestions and already had her own views on what she wanted to do.
Some officials, including the likes of European
Three European Commission officials who met with the Facebook whistleblower were less than impressed by her take
on the bloc's Digital Services Act, or online content proposals,
as what she suggested, including efforts to boost transparency,
were ideas that had been debated in Europe for years.
Despite ongoing differences between EU lawmakers about how to pass social media rules,
politicians aren't divided along partisan lines
over claims companies like Facebook either censor right wing voices or
do too little to keep such divisive political speech off these networks.
This contrasts to the U.S.
How I Found Comfort in Volunteer Firefighting
Firefighting is not unlike being a parent in some ways.
People call us with problems they can’t solve,
which is to say there’s a wall of flame coming toward their house or a giant tree has come down on their roof in a storm.
The problems then become ours, and we do our best to take care of them.
Sometimes we try and fail.
But what I’ve come to learn is that it is better to have stood up for a community, for a child,
than to have stood by and done nothing at all.