Daily Archives: July 30, 2017

Its not just an unassuming carton in the supermarket dairy aisle. At least, not anymore.

Soy milk has been available since 1947 and is currently in high demand, bringing in about $300 million per year. Despite its popularityor perhaps because of itthe beverage has also found itself at the center of a global debate over freedom of speech.

Traditional dairy companies are arguing that the soy industry has inappropriately coopted terminologies such as milk to sell products, and that in doing so, its confusing consumers. The debate is reaching a fever pitch as cow-milk peddlersespecially in the USfind themselves in the sales doldrums while simultaneously having to fight off consumer interest in vegan, plant-based food companies looking to take more of their market share.

As a result of sour dairy-company profits, the soyfood industryworth about $5 billionis increasingly finding itself in courtrooms around the world. At its core, these cases boil down to the issue of free speech, and whether a beverage made by a commercial enterprisesuch as a soy milk companycan legally describe itself as milk.

Whether a soy company can market its liquid product as milk depends on where you are in the world. Thats because its one thing to consider individual peoples freedom of speech, but when it comes to businesses, governments take different positions globally. Those differences have created a legal minefield for soy milk.

In the US, the right to free speech includes protections for commercial speech, which is speech done on behalf of a company for the intent of making a profit. In places such as Canada and the European Union, it is generally upheld as the freedom of expression, which includes the right to hold opinions and impart ideas without interference by the government. When it comes to how that applies to corporations, the European Commission, the EUs ruling body, commits to promoting best practices by companies.

In Europe, this sort of language leaves a lot of wiggle room in the grey area of commercial speech. I think the American acceptance of commercial speech as a form of speech differentiates us from other countries, says Roy Gutterman, the director of Syracuse Universitys Tully Center for Free Speech. Other countries have way more room to regulate. We leave less room for the government to decide when it comes to speech issues.

The different legal attitudes toward freedom of speech mean that in the US, courts generally side with plant-based food companies, and in Europe, courts are ruling against them.

In June, the European Court of Justice heard a case in which a company called TofuTown was challenged by a German consumer-protection group. The court ultimately ruled that plant-based foods in the EU cannot be sold as milk, butter, and cheese because their chief ingredient isnt derived from an animal. Consumers could be confused, the court said. This ruling stands even if those products are clearly marketed as animal-free, such as TofuTowns products soyatoo tofu butter and veggie cheese.

In the same month, a US court heard a similar case against WhiteWave Foods, which produces Silk and So Delicious soy, almond, coconut, and cashew products, such as non-dairy milk, creamer, yoghurt, and ice-cream alternatives. The federal district court in California dismissed the issue outright, saying there was no consumer confusion. The court added that the challengers essentially allege that a reasonable consumer would view the terms soy milk and almond milk, disregard the first words in the names, and assume that the beverages came from cows. One month before, another federal court in California ruled in favor of almond-milk maker Blue Diamond Growers, concluding that the challenger failed to plausibly allege that a reasonable consumer is likely to be deceived.

Still, the laws in Europe arent totally cut-and-dry. In 2010, the European Commission (pdf) oddly included coconut milk, ice cream, cocoa butter, and peanut butter on a list of products that are protected. This patchwork of different rules across the globe makes it especially difficult for companies looking to expand business, as discrepancies across borders can cause prickly problems for food companies looking to get their products in more supermarkets.

For an American soy-milk maker that wants to expand into Europe, this would present a serious policy challenge, says Jessica Almy, director of policy at the Good Food Institute (GFI), a Washington-based group that supports and lobbies on behalf of vegan and vegetarian food companies. Where theres no consumer confusion, they cant be restricting what goes on the label. For that reason, GFI is looking for ways to try and reshape regulations in Europe to clear a path for products such as soy milk.

The results of these legal skirmishes will stock the fridge for a food-production future that might be less reliant on animal-based agriculture. For example, new food-technology companies perfecting lab-made meats and acellular milk will be watching these battles closely to see how they will be able to market their products. In the global marketplace, these kinds of companies are still currently tiny players with big ambitions. But if they cant jump the freedom-of-speech hurdle, there will be serious roadblocks to cracking into big markets around the world.

This sounds like its a cutting edge issue thats going to be gaining some publicity and notoriety as it develops, Gutterman says.

Read this next: How the vegan movement broke out of its echo chamber and finally started disrupting things

The rest is here:
Soy milk is at the epicenter of a global free-speech debate - Quartz

Does Congress have a place in the free speech campus debate? The House of Representatives subcommittee on intergovernmental affairs sought to find out in their hearing on the Challenges to Freedom of Speech on College Campuses.

The committee is concerned about the state of free speech on college campuses amid the protests in the past year against controversial speakers such as alt-right advocate Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative pundit Ann Coulter, bothat the University of California-Berkeley, where protests ensued.

The key issue is whether, in an effort to preserve free speech, college campuses could fall into an area where their actions would inhibit it.

The House hearing comes on the heels of a similar hearing in the Senate last month.

The House hearing focused on a recent law in Wisconsin which seeks to allow for the suspension or expulsion of any University of Wisconsin student who engages in indecent, profane, boisterous, obscene, unreasonably loud or other disorderly conduct that interferes with the free expression of others, and committee members were especially concerned with how conservative speakers could be silenced by those who disagree with their opinions.

The experts agreed that the government should not have a role in policing free speech on campuses or deliberating what is considered to be a breech of free speech though disagreed on who should.

Michael Zimmerman, the former provost and vice president for academic affairs at the Evergreen State College which has recently grappled with protests and free speech issues on its campus advocated for putting the control in the hands of the school administrators.

This is wrong and it must stop, but what we dont need is additional legislation, he said. We currently have all the tools we need to fix the problem if we have the courage to use them. College administrators need to have the courage to stand for what is right, to stand for principles rather than expediency, and to risk alienating some in the same of those principles.

He affirmed his commitment to freedom of speech on campus: When we shut out voices, we shut out ideas, and serious consequences ensue.

Though Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of conservative news and opinion site the Daily Wire, highlighted instances where he felt the administrations decisions infringed on his own right to free speech, such as at the University of Wisconsin where he gave a speech last year which was interrupted by protesters. He said he asked the police to intervene, but they told him the administration advised them not to.

What Im seeing is a hecklers veto thats taking place on campuses, Shapiro said. What Im seeing is people engaging in free speech that is not made to enrich the debate, but in order to shut down the debate, and there have to be some sort of ramifications for people who are actually committing trespass.

At a minimum, the clearest way experts see to protect free speech is to encourage more dialogue overall, especially on controversial topics.

The appropriate answer, as the Supreme Court has said, is more speech, counter speech, said New York Law School professor Nadine Strossen, and interestingly enough, evidence indicates that it is far more effective than censorship in robustly effectively countering ideas that we disagree with.

Zimmerman echoed Strossens point as well.

The more we talk with one another and the more we listen to one another, the easier it is to understand one another, Zimmerman said. When we look at others as other, we can demonize them, we can ignore their ideas and know their ideas are wrong. When we understand who these people are and what they believe, its so much easier to share what we have in common, instead of looking for our differences.

Emma Kinery is a University of Michigan student and a USA TODAY intern.

More here:
Who should police free speech on college campuses? Congress wants to know - USA TODAY

From the Financial Timesearlier this week:

German media were too uncritical in their coverage of the 2015 refugee crisis, giving Angela Merkels open-door policy a free pass and failing to represent the legitimate concerns of ordinary people alarmed by the influx, a new study has found.The report, commissioned by the Otto Brenner Stiftung in Frankfurt, said the coverage was so one-sided that it ended up deepening the ideological rift in Germany between liberals on the one hand and nationalists and conservatives on the other.

Up until late autumn 2015 hardly any editorials dealt with the concerns, fears and also resistance of a growing part of the population, the report said. When they did, they adopted a didactic or in the case of east Germany [where anti-immigrant sentiment is strongest], a contemptuous tone.

The study, led by Michael Haller, a former senior editor at weekly newspaper Die Zeit, is the most comprehensive analysis of how the German media dealt with the migrant crisis

Newspapers were filled with articles about the new Willkommenskultur or welcome culture, epitomised by the crowds who gathered in Munich station in September 2015 to greet refugees arriving from Hungary and hand out sweets and toys.

The report said Willkommenskultur became a kind of magic word used by certain sections of the media to turn ordinary people into good Samaritans and encourage them to carry out acts of kindness towards newcomers.

And yet even this was not enough for Merkel, an authoritarian curiously now widely praised as a defender of liberal (in the accurate sense of that word) values.

Heres CNBC from September, 2015:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was overheard confronting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over incendiary posts on the social network, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, amid complaints from her government about anti-immigrant posts in the midst of Europes refugee crisis. On the sidelines of a United Nations luncheon on Saturday, Merkel was caught on a hot mic pressing Zuckerberg about social media posts about the wave of Syrian refugees entering Germany, the publication reported.The Facebook CEO was overheard responding that we need to do some work on curtailing anti-immigrant posts about the refugee crisis. Are you working on this? Merkel asked in English, to which Zuckerberg replied in the affirmative before the transmission was disrupted.

Could it have been that some people at least were turning to Facebook to express their views because there was nowhere else where they could get a hearing?

In the course of a post that September on the topic of the German governments attitude to (yes, sometimes ugly) dissent, I noted this from a Breitbart report:

An organisation run by a former Stasi agent has been recruited by the German government to patrol Facebook in a bid to stamp out xenophobic comments. Those caught posting material that the government disagrees with are likely to face criminal prosecution.Germany is set to welcome one million new immigrants this year, a move that has not been without controversy. Determined to see his fellow Germans embrace their new multicultural homeland, Justice Minister Heiko Maas has decided to crack down on those citizens who criticise the influx, especially those who take to their own private Facebook accounts to do so.Maas has recruited the help of an organisation Network Against Nazis (Netz Gegen Nazis, or NAN) to aid him in his crackdown. NAN was founded by, and according to its website works in partnership with, the Amaedu Antonio Foundation, run by Anetta Kahane, who between 1974 and 1982 worked for the Stasi under the code name Victoria [According to Wikipedia she was an "Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter", an "unofficial collaborator" with the Stasi, no agent, but still...].

Fast forward to the end of last month.

Newsweek:

Social media companies in Germany that dont do enough to prevent the spread of hate speech and fake news could face fines, the countrys parliament ruled Friday.

What could go wrong?

Newsweek:

Networks that do not remove content that is obviously illegal within 24 hours, or one week in less clear-cut cases, face fines beginning at 5 million ($5.7 million) and rising to 50 million ($57 million) depending on the severity of the offense concerned.Facebook immediately slammed the decision in a statement. The company said it shared the aspiration to fight hate speech in a statement to the BBC, but: We believe the best solutions will be found when government, civil society and industry work together and that this law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem.

The new law has even gone too far for the UN

But the U.N. has criticized the bill. Many of the violations covered by the bill are highly dependent on context, context which platforms are in no position to assess, the U.N. Special Rapporteur to the High Commissioner for Human Rights David Kaye wrote of the law in the run up to its passage.

At the beginning of 2016 (as I noted in a post here), Angela Merkel was awarded the Roosevelt Foundations Four Freedoms Award for, amongst other achievements, her moral leadership of Germany and Europe during the refugee crisis.

Handelsblatt:

The Roosevelt Foundation in Middelburg, the Netherlands, and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in New York present the annual Four Freedoms Award which is named after the four freedoms President Franklin D. Roosevelt named in a speech in 1941 and which all people should enjoy. They are freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Top of the list: Freedom of speech.

More:
Merkel, Germany, the Media and Free Speech - National Review