New Report Highlights Ongoing Battle Between Government and Food Freedom

In California, the federal government seized half of a couple’s raisin crop—worth half a million dollars—without compensation. In Utah, restaurants have to erect a literal wall between customers and bartenders. And Houston prohibits residents from sharing food with the poor. From bans on front-yard vegetable gardens to bans on subjectively “large” sodas, a new report published by the Institute for Justice makes a compelling case that food freedom is under attack—along with the economic liberty of food entrepreneurs.

The Attack on Food Freedom, by Baylen Linnekin of Keep Food Legal, documents the many ways that food freedom and economic liberty are under attack. Linnekin defines “food freedom” as the right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, share, cook, eat and drink the foods you want. He explains how overzealous food-safety regulations, bureaucratically imposed hoops, and hurdles and laws aimed at the “new” public health—the government’s effort to promote what it has decided is a “healthy” lifestyle—are all undermining our right to eat what we want and the food entrepreneur’s right to earn an honest living.

The Attack on Food Freedom is the first installment of Perspectives on Economic Liberty, a new series of independently authored reports published by IJ, and part of our National Food Freedom Initiative. Contact Christina Walsh at [email protected] for your own copy.