The Open Market Blog

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/17/2008

The Cultural Revolution has finally made it to Norway. The Labor party’s Minister of Culture has spent the summer traversing the music festivals of the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/11/2008

The newly elected government of Thailand is continuing the previous government’s disregard for international patent law and for the health of its citizens. Now the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/11/2008

While demand for the healthier low-lineolic acid soybean is soaring, because everyone and his mother wants food with healthier fats, the EU is…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/11/2008

Sweden is no longer the country with the highest tax burden, Denmark has unseated it from that throne.

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/10/2008

The British Prime Minister’s incoming science adviser, Professor John Beddington, says that food crisis will take hold before climate change. One of the problems…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/10/2008

The Interior Department’s Inspector General has started preliminary investigations into why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is delaying its decision on whether polar…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/10/2008

The battle over recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBST) continues, and it seems like Monsanto has finally learned how to fight the policy battle. Although…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/07/2008

The final verdict in the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) trial for the arson of the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture is finally in,…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/06/2008

I adore Matthew Nisbeth’s research but he is off his rocker in this comment he posted on his blog and that he presented in…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/06/2008

Last night I got home from an exhausting and exhilarating trip to New York City. During my stay, I barely got out of the hotel…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 03/04/2008

James Lovelock is the originator of the Gaia myth and convinced that the world is coming to an end, soon, because of global warming is…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/26/2008

March wheat futures went for a record $24 yesterday, while the May wheat futures rose the maximum 90 cents allowed to $11.99 a bushel…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/20/2008

Al Gore had to take the two biggest spin words of 2007 and combine them into a really scary scenario at a UN meeting with…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/20/2008

Food prices are going up. Since the green revolution in the 1940s-1960s food prices have been going down, but now they are on an…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/20/2008

Two groups release reports about the same topic at the same time, their conclusions are diametrically opposed to each other. What is a poor reporter…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/20/2008

I’ve been saying the 147 million pound beef recall will lead to calls for more regulation and better regulation, even though the regulatory regime in…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 02/19/2008

The USDA started off this week with a historic recall after an investigation revealed violation of food safety regulations in a California meat processing…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/27/2008

Stimulus package or more deficit spending? I tend to agree with Prof. Samwick in his commentary on “Marketplace” last Friday: It is deficit spending.

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/27/2008

It seems the anti-biotechnology lobby is bringing out the big guns to prevent the new Roundup Ready sugar beet to have its first commercial growing…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/27/2008

The global temperature has been stable since 1998 according to Ole Humlum at the University of Oslo. In the largest paper in Norway, he…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/25/2008

Germany is opening the door for a corn variety bred with molecular plant breeding methods, and neither activists nor Monsanto is happy about the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/22/2008

Some legislators, including Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD) are now hollowing out an age old principle of FDA marketing regulations by promoting mandatory labeling…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/22/2008

Percy Schmeiser, the Canadian farmer who was convicted of contract breach in the Canadian Supreme Court because he was brown bagging Monsanto seed against the…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/22/2008

The US is gearing up for another showdown with the EU over protectionist trade barriers based on environmental concerns. French president Sarkozy suggested a…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/21/2008

Pennsylvania is backing down from its labeling ban after pressure from consumer groups. Diaries can now label products as being produced without artificial growth…

• By: Lene Johansen
• 01/18/2008

I wrote about the French January 9 moratorium on plants created with molecular plant breeding techniques previously. I thought the reports that stated there…