Category: The Dish

by Jonah Shepp

Sabra, the company you may know but not necessarily love for their prepackaged hummus, is asking the government to create a standard definition of their signature product:

The Food and Drug Administration already does this with some other products like cream cheese (which must be 33 percent milk fat for manufacturers to market it as cream cheese). Sabra argues the hummus market has run amok; its time for Uncle Sam to step in. “Some products labeled as ‘hummus’ are made entirely from legumes other than chickpeas,” Sabra wrote in its filing with the Food and Drug Administration. “Because these products substitute other legumes, the marketing of these products as “hummus” undermines honesty and fair dealing.”

As a traditional Middle Eastern dip, hummus has two crucial ingredients: chickpeas and tahini (the latter being a paste made from ground sesame seeds). Sabra has surveyed the market and, in documents submitted to the FDA, finds these two ingredients decidedly lacking in many purported hummus products today. … “The marketing of a ‘hummus’ product made from legumes other than chickpeas is akin to the marketing of guacamole made with fruit other than avocados,” Sabra argues.

Strictly on the merits, they are correct here—the word “hummus” actually means chickpeas—though I find some irony in a company founded by Israelis demanding that the American government standardize the definition of an Arabic word. Of course, this move has nothing to do with the merits and everything to do with regulating competitors out of existence. Tim Cavanaugh sees right through it:

If Sabra wants to sell a chipotle hummus, more power to them. Consumers have spent millions of dollars on the company’s dry, bland, plastic-tasting product, and nobody was forcing them. But this FDA petition is about hobbling rivals, not helping restore the consumer’s “confidence in the food supply.” Only the excellent Tablet magazine even hints at the possibility that Sabra, which has about 60 percent of this rapidly growing market, might be looking to lock out competitors.

The phenomenon is called “regulatory capture,” and the reason you almost never hear about it is because the public and the media have fully internalized the language of good government. When big companies exert political influence, they are not trying to end regulation of their industries: They’re trying to create it so that competitors have a harder time completing. Notice how no company ever agitates for stronger regulations before it becomes the dominant player.

(Image: A screenshot from Sabra’s petition.)

by Jonah Shepp

Ali Wyne reviews Robert Kaplan’s new book, Asia’s Cauldron, which explains the South China Sea’s centrality to Pacific politics:

He emphasizes three points. First, Chinese primacy in the South China Sea “would go a long way toward making China more than merely the first among equals of Eastern Hemispheric powers.” Second, the principal risk for China’s smaller neighbors is not invasion, but “Finlandization.” The growing gravitational pull of China’s economy doubles as a carrot—your economy will continue to flourish if you keep yourself open to our exports and investments—and a stick—you will endanger an increasingly important component of your economy if you take actions that undermine our national interests. Behind that dual-use instrument is an increasingly capable People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Given its aspiration of achieving a peaceful rise, China would prefer that its smaller neighbors accommodate themselves to its perspectives on the territorial disputes that are roiling the region (essentially, Kaplan explains, “give in without violence”). Third, the US “must be prepared to allow, in some measure, for a rising Chinese navy to assume its rightful position, as the representative of the region’s largest indigenous power.”

Posner analyzes China’s escalating disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines over maritime borders and islands in the sea:

One question that arises is why China and its neighbors are suddenly having so many conflicts that are violent or near-violent. The conflicting territorial claims have existed for decades but violence has been sporadic until recently (aside from the China-Vietnam War).

M. Taylor Fravel argues that China seeks to “consolidate” its claims by keeping other countries out of disputed areas. That would explain why China reacts aggressively–by sending in ships and planes–typically after the neighbors pass some law or take other actions that make clear that they consider their claims valid. But why are those countries provoking China in this way, and why now?

As Fravel suggests, China’s strategy is one of delay while claiming that the disputes are unresolved. The neighbors, by contrast, claim that there is no dispute and their claims are valid. China’s strategy thus seems more passive. And the reason is surely that time is on China’s side. China has grown more rapidly than all of its neighbors and looks likely to continue to do so for the near future, at least. As it becomes more dominant–both economically and militarily–its neighbors will be in a worse position to counter its claims in their shared waters.

Hugh White suspects that Beijing’s recent aggressiveness is also meant to limit American influence:

By using direct armed pressure in these disputes, China makes its neighbours more eager for US military support, and at the same time makes America less willing to give it, because of the clear risk of a direct US-China clash. In other words, by confronting America’s friends with force, China confronts America with the choice between deserting its friends and fighting China. Beijing is betting that, faced with this choice, America will back off and leave its allies and friends unsupported. This will weaken America’s alliances and partnerships, undermine US power in Asia, and enhance China’s power.

This view of China’s motives explains its recent conduct.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader can relate to these would-be hires:

I was rejected by the FBI because of pot! I applied to be a special agent shortly after 9/11. I had two major complaints about the process.

First, I had just finished two years of service in Morocco with the Peace Corps, and I thought I could leverage my language ability in Arabic. However, the only Arabic that they could test 0r give credit for was “FousHa”, or the educated version of Arabic that would be nearly unintelligible to uneducated Arabic speakers. No credit was available to speakers of dialects.

Second, they said I would have to make several certifications, including (if memory serves), “I have not used marijuana more than three times in the last five years,” and “I have not used marijuana more than 10 times in my life.” Since most of my marijuana experience was from a few trips to Amsterdam, I asked if it was relevant that I never smoked marijuana in violation of US law, or if I had never done so in violation of any law (I would have had to look a bit more carefully at Dutch law before certifying to that last one). Answer: Nope – look for another job.

I think the FBI recruiter said the marijuana policies were even more strict before Bill Clinton’s administration – the logic, perhaps, being that President Clinton wouldn’t want policies that would have excluded him. I left thinking, with all due respect to the FBI, that they didn’t have a clue of what they were recruiting for. The Arabic they were testing for would be useless to anyone trying to understand spoken Arabic in any country, and they were excluding otherwise qualified candidates on the basis of insignificant and lawful recreational pot use. So, no surprise here that they’re having trouble hiring hackers.