Bloglander

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What would make a festive photo? Ah, my cute little desk pumpkin.

Happy Halloween! We’ve got two weeks of food notes and tidbits to catch up on, so here goes…

Last week’s Entree newsletter mentioned the grand opening of Pete & Belle’s Ice Cream Shop in the Valley, which is featured in this week’s print issue, and also had news of a new mobile juice vendor. Since that newsletter link isn’t working so well anymore, we’ll just put Jo Miller’s whole writeup here:

Raw juice and reggae music has hit the Spokane streets in the form of a red, yellow and green 1969 Prowler trailer.

Beet It Up, the name of this mobile raw juice and smoothie bar, started up last weekend at the Barter Faire in Tonasket. But Brandi Elder and John Gardner, the Spokane locals who run the bar, plan to be in the downtown Spokane area, while occasionally traveling to music festivals and fairs.

One of the bestsellers during their opening weekend was their hot chocolate with raw cacao and wild medicinal mushrooms, Elder says.

Both Elder and Gardner are well versed in the juicing world. Elder has been into raw foods and juices for about 15 years and Gardner has been juicing for 17 years.

The two created four raw juices for their menu. One drink, named Beet It Up, combines apple, carrot, beet and lemon. It's a more basic juice that is the most palatable for juice-drinking beginners, Elder says. The Veggie Hut mixes apple, carrot, celery, cabbage, kale and lemon and the La-Beet-O blends pineapple, pear and carrot with ginger and a squirt of beet.
You can also choose from their organic fruits, roots and veggies to build your own juice or you can order organic tea and fair-trade coffee. Eventually, Elder says they'll serve seasonal raw salads.

Keep an eye on Beet It Up's Facebook page to find out where they park.

"We'll be bumping reggae music," Elder says. "John does African drumming and you're welcome to bring your drum."

This week’s Entree newsletter has news about the soon-to-open Boiler Room and Our Thai House, as well as Revel 77’s big birthday bash. This week’s issue has an update on Ferrante’s Marketplace Cafe and a story about the Service Station.

Kyla Goff, co-owner of the Tailgater Sports Bar near the Spokane Arena, was convicted in San Diego on fraud and embezzling charges and will be sentenced next week. The popular sports bar had reportedly been having some troubles recently and KXLY reported that the Tailgater is now closed with a For Lease sign out front. We’re looking into it.

Alberta Bake Shop in the Shadle Park neighborhood passed final inspections and is planning to open next Tuesday at 9 am.

The long-awaited Buffalo Wild Wings in the Valley officially opened last Monday.

Chairs Public House in the Logan neighborhood, an offshoot of the popular coffee shop, is now aiming for a mid-November opening.

This Saturday, all five Jacob’s Java locations will be donating 10 percent of sales to the families of the two University High students killed in a car crash several weeks ago. Their message online says: “Please stop by and celebrate their lives and help raise money for their families.”

No-Li

In beer news, No-Li put its beer in 12-oz. for the first time ever this week. They’re selling 4-packs of the Wrecking Ball Imperial Stout and Jet Star Imperial IPA.

Orlison continues its push to expand-and-rebrand with a nice new website featuring its brand-new cans.

Spokane’s burgeoning beer scene is getting national attention in Draft Magazine’s upcoming issue, KREM reports.

Trickster’s in Coeur d’Alene is planning to expand distribution into Washington soon — business paperwork says “in kegs initially with bottles soon after.”

Mad Bomber Brewing Company is hosting their grand opening tomorrow, Nov. 1.

The new taproom for River City Brewing is getting close enough that they’re hiring.

BiPlane Brewing Company has been having a volatile year after the split of its owners, and a message posted on Facebook indicates it may be closing up for good this weekend.

If you’re in Pullman for the Halloween football game, Ferdinand’s Ice Cream Shoppe is staying open later than a typical school night — just get there before kickoff.

Can't get enough? Read previous food news here.

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If the name New Approach Oregon sounds familiar, it should. New Approach Washington led last year's successful push to legalize recreational marijuana in Washington. Now, the Oregonian reports our neighbors have filed a new initiative following Washington's (and Colorado's) lead. If state legislators don't approve New Approach Oregon's measure, the group plans to begin collecting signatures to put it on the ballot in 2014. With more than $100,000 raised — $50,000 from the George Soros-backed Drug Policy Alliance, which also supported Washington's effort — resources shouldn't be a problem.

While the group's law is similar to Washington's I-502, it doesn't establish the same explicit driving-while-high regulations and it would allow home grows, which are illegal in Washington. A legalization measure in Oregon last year would have allowed home grows and didn't place limits on possession, but it failed at the ballot box. So, a measure with more regulations — like the strict age, possession, location and advertising limits in Washington's 502 — could gain more widespread support.

Meanwhile, the ACLU of California announced a panel led by the state's governor to explore legalizing marijuana there. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws says it will push for legalization in Maine. And the owner of a hemp clothing store who's helping to push a legalization measure in Washington, D.C. told reporters earlier this month, "I imagine the president rolling up a tobacco-marijuana cigarette with John Boehner and sitting on the back porch of the White House to work out their problems."

Yeah, OK.

But while that may be a long shot, the public tide appears to be turning. According to Gallup, for the first time in history, a majority of Americans (58 percent) support legalizing the drug. Among young people, support for legalization is at 62 percent, and nearly 40 percent of Americans say they've tried marijuana.

It’s Halloween! Enjoy these photos from back when people took the scary part seriously. (BuzzFeed)

HERE

The 16-year-old driver in the crash that killed two University High girls several weeks had gotten his license the previous day and may face charges. (KXLY)

Spokane Valley’s City Council says they won’t support Prop. 1 because county commissioners should have looked for other ways to relocate residents living in the Fairchild crash zone. (S-R)

Washington state wants to make sure no liquor establishments allow marijuana use. (AP)

THERE

You now have to be 21 to buy cigarettes in New York City — not that many young adults could afford $15 for a pack anyway. (CBS/Awl)

Syria met a major chemical weapons deadline to destroy its production capabilities. (Reuters)

A little boy decided to hang out on stage with Pope Francis during an address at St. Peter’s Square and the pope was cool with it. (NBC)

EVERYWHERE

The NSA infiltrated Google and Yahoo data centers to access user information worldwide. And that’s on top of the PRISM program that already forced those companies to turn over certain information. Google is understandably outraged. (WaPo/BBC)

Speaking of planes, Virgin America has a new, musical in-flight safety video:

Yesterday, President Obama called him “a man who embodied the virtues of devotion and respect.”

Tom Foley, a Spokane native and former U.S. Speaker of the House, will be honored Friday at a memorial service held at Gonzaga University, and we have more details in this week’s paper. Our publisher also devoted his weekly column to Foley and the era of politics he represented.

When Foley spoke in Spokane 2006, the local Hamilton Studio prepared this documentary — poignant but often funny — about his life and career. It has been updated with an introduction that includes some of his remarks from that 2006 appearance. (For those who know little about him, you may want to start at the 4:15 mark.)

In it, Foley says: “Public office is a gift — it’s a gift of a free people. It’s the greatest gift that anyone interested in public life can receive — the confidence, the support, the hope of the American people who give you that great gift.”

Here are the requirements for a Marvel poster:

1. Hero looking off to right. Check.

2. Girl clutching said Hero's chest. Check.

3. Bad guy huge in background. Check.

4. Bunch of minor characters smaller surrounded by destruction. Check.

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Look for a review of Thor: The Dark World in next week's issue.

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Young Kwak

Temperatures are dropping and decorations are going up — the holiday season is returning to the Inland Northwest. Pat Domy, left, and Rich Clark install Christmas lights on a bridge near the boat docks at the Coeur d'Alene Resort in Coeur d'Alene on Tuesday.

HERE

Here’s a local contractor you should probably never hire to build you anything. (S-R)

Authorities think you should be aware that a 55-year-old man with a history of stalking and luring crimes has been talking to kids at West Plains bus stops. (KXLY)

A Spokane Valley man was injured by his own machete during an argument over an ex-girlfriend’s stuff. (KREM)

Sandpoint-based Coldwater Creek announces layoffs and major restructuring. (Idaho Statesman)

KHQ has the dashboard cam footage from the ISP-involved shooting near Lookout Pass back in June. (KHQ)

NEAR

A Skagit County couple found guilty of their adopted teen daughter’s death were sentenced to many decades in prison. (AP)

Seattle police watching speeding in school zones are handing out tickets to bicyclists, too. (Seattle Times)

Some people in Boise are pretty excited about getting rid of their one-way streets. (Idaho Statesman)

ELSEWHERE

Kathleen Sebelius is testifying about problems with the online health insurance exchanges run by the federal government. (WaPo)

Almost 50 people were killed in a fiery bus crash in southern India. (BBC)

China says that car crash in Tieneman Square earlier this week was a terrorist act by religious extremists. (NYT)

The Jonas Brothers explain their breakup. (E!)

Still images from a No on 522 ad, left, and a Yes on 522 ad, right.

In the ongoing and record-breaking battle over I-522, which would making Washington the first state to require labeling of food made with GMO ingredients, one of the main talking points is the cost. Ads from the pro-labeling side say it “won’t cost you a dime” while the anti-labeling side says it will cost a family of four $450 a year. So who’s right?

First of all, no one really knows.

As we’ve seen with other system changes — marijuana regulation, liquor privatization, health care reform — no one can accurately say how much it’s going to cost until it happens. The labeling required by I-522 would cost something. But estimates about how much and who would pay it are wildly different. Here’s what we know so far:

THE STATE

The state’s Office of Finacial Management offers one of the most specific estimates: $3.37 million in administrative costs over 6 years, which amounts to about 8 cents per state resident per year. But this estimate is only about costs for the state — rule development, enforcement, lab testing, etc. — and not about food production costs that could be passed on to consumers.

THE OPTIMISTS

California had a very similar measure on the ballot last year, and the pro-labeling camp has primarily promoted a study assessing that measure. Joanna M. Shepherd-Bailey of Emory University School of Law concluded that the California measure would result in trivial relabeling expenses that companies would not pass on to consumers:

Consumers will likely see no increases in prices as a result of the relabeling required by the Right to Know Act. A substantial body of empirical literature has established that important barriers to price adjustments exist that will deter suppliers from increasing prices to pass on the labeling expenses imposed by the Right to Know Act.

The pro-labeling (and vaccine-fighting) Alliance for Natural Health, which commissioned the first study, recently released a Washington state follow-up study by the same professor. It draws the same broad conclusions and says the “improbable, worst-case scenario” would be a one-year cost of $2.20 per person. The study does not address possible increases in food production costs. 

In a separate independent study commissioned by the obviously pro-labeling group Just Label It and published in September, marketing expert Kai Robertson concluded there’s no evidence that changes to labels have an effect on supermarket prices.

There are no studies that document the impact of a product’s label change on prices charged by supermarkets. This is not too surprising given the interdependence of factors that influence prices set by supermarkets, inherent “stickiness” of prices set at the wholesale level and the regularity with which many labels are changed as part of a company’s normal business practices. In sum, this study finds no evidence that changes to a food processor’s product labels affect the prices paid by shoppers.

THE PESSIMISTS

On the other side of things, the anti-labeling side has relied on a study they commissioned by the business-friendly Washington Research Council, published in September. It estimates a initial-compliance cost of $264 million for farmers and food manufacturers.

On an ongoing basis, food manufacturers would either have to create special labels for the portion of their products sold in Washington state, or remake those products with higher-priced non-GE or organic ingredients to avoid the mandate to apply special labels. Those costs would be passed on to Washington consumers through higher food prices.

They estimate it would cost a family of four an extra $200-520 from 2015 to 2019, then $450-520 a year after 2019 when the zero-tolerance threshold part of I-522 goes into effect.

A similar study the campaign commissioned from Northbridge Environmental Management Consultants came to similar conclusions that grocery prices would rise $360 a year for a family of four through 2019, then $490 in subsequent years.

THE ACADEMICS

In response to a request from the state Legislature, the Washington Academy of Sciences released a report several weeks ago to answer five central questions about I-522. Unsurprisingly, one of those was about cost, and the researchers concluded that higher costs are likely.

Mandatory labeling, especially at a state versus federal level, is likely to affect trade and impose higher costs on firms producing and selling products in Washington. These costs are likely to be passed on to the consumer resulting in higher food prices.

The study doesn’t, however, put any actual dollar figures on its estimates. It points out that most of the cost to producers and food companies isn’t from relabeling, but from the need to segregate GMO and non-GMO products throughout the supply chain. (If you’re really interested in all of this, the references pages of that report serve as a good extended reading list.)

THE VARIABLES

In the end, the reason the estimates vary so much is that it depends on how consumers and food companies react — and we really don’t know what’s going to happen. (This Associated Press story and this excellent NPR piece both do a good job explaining the uncertainty.)

The two main scenarios:

1. If consumers avoid products with GMO labels (or food companies fear they will), costs would probably rise.

In Europe, many companies fearful of consumer rejection stopped using GMO ingredients altogether once labeling laws went into effect in the late ’90s. A lot of labeling supporters would be happy to see this happen — but it would almost certainly cause some increase in food prices as companies reformulate their products or fight for more expensive non-GMO ingredients. This is the assumption of the anti-labeling studies that predict families’ grocery bills would increase by hundreds of dollars.

2. If consumers don’t care, costs probably won’t change much.

The cost of the actual label change would be very small for most major companies. So if people are undeterred and keep on shopping as usual, it’s fair to expect very little effect on prices. But, if this is the case, companies would likely avoid the more substantial costs of keeping GMO and non-GMO separate by just slapping the GMO label on everything — an outcome that would leave us about as uninformed as we are now.

This is the assumption of the pro-labeling studies that conclude the label changes themselves wouldn't cost much. But most people who support labeling feel that it’s part of reforming the food industry and creating greater transparency, and that won’t happen without change. It’s unlikely the goal of reform will be achieved without some cost to consumers — and the question of how much just can’t be answered until it happens.

HERE

The wife of troubled developer Greg Jeffreys would rather you didn’t know part of the allegedly stolen money came from federal stimulus funds. (S-R)

A former Othello teacher was sentenced to a year in jail and sex offender treatment for molesting a 10-year-old student. (KXLY)

A former WSU political science professor was sentenced to up to five years for sexually assaulting a teen. (AP)

The No on 522 campaign has raised more money than any other initiative campaign in Washington state history. (Inlander)

THERE

It’s been a year since Hurricane Sandy caused massive destruction on the East Coast; some places have recovered and some really haven’t. (Atlantic In Focus)

And now a huge Atlantic storm is battering northern Europe, with at least 12 people dead. (BBC)

A federal judge struck down parts of the restrictive new abortion law in Texas. The state attorney general has already appealed. (Houston Chronicle)

A Colorado man getting a divorce says he converted $500,000 in life savings into gold and then threw it away to prevent his ex-wife from getting a penny. (Gazette, via Gawker)

Awww. Just try not to look at these adorable lion cubs in Oregon. (Oregonian)