Epicures and Duck Farms Get a Reprieve From New York’s Foie Gras Ban

The WSJ has the latest turn of events in this long running story:

Epicures and Duck Farms Get a Reprieve From New York’s Foie Gras Ban. The city ordinance fails to pass muster with the state’s Agriculture Department. by  Megan Keller

"Good news for New York City epicures and upstate farmers: Foie gras will remain on menus in the city. They can thank the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, which last Wednesday found that the city’s ban on the avian delicacy violated the farmers’ rights under state law.

Foie gras is made from duck or goose livers fattened through a force-feeding process called gavage—administering gradually larger amounts of feed through a small tube in the bird’s throat. The farmers who produce foie gras say the ducks remain healthy and content throughout their lives, but some animal-rights activists consider the practice cruel. In 2019 the New York City Council enacted an ordinance banning the sale of foie gras, which was scheduled to take effect last month."

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Earlier: https://marketdesigner.blogspot.com/search?q=foie

 

Turkey production

 This seemed like a post that I should delay until after Thanksgiving, from the extension division of Penn State:

Modern Turkey Industry. The modern turkey industry has developed a hybrid white turkey that is larger and faster growing than purebred or wild turkeys.

Lab grown meat: taking slaughter out of the food chain

 Come a day, we'll be able to eat chicken meat that wasn't grown in a chicken...

The Guardian has the story:

US declares lab-grown meat safe to eat in ‘groundbreaking’ move. The government’s approval will open the market for a food praised for being more efficient and environmentally friendly. by Oliver Milman 

"The US government has cleared the way for Americans to be able to eat lab-grown meat, after authorities deemed a meat product derived from animal cells to be safe for human consumption.

"The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will allow* a California company called Upside Foods to take living cells from chickens and then grow them in a controlled laboratory environment to produce a meat product that doesn’t involve the actual slaughter of any animals.

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From the FDA

*FDA Completes First Pre-Market Consultation for Human Food Made Using Animal Cell Culture Technology. Before Entering the U.S. Market, the Food Must Meet Other Federal

"The voluntary pre-market consultation is not an approval process. Instead, it means that after our careful evaluation of the data and information shared by the firm, we have no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion."

The Allocation of Food to Food Banks by Canice Prendergast in the JPE

 The Allocation of Food to Food Banks by Canice Prendergast, Journal of Political Economy 130, 8, 1993-2017.

Abstract: "Feeding America allocates donated food to over 200 food banks. In 2005, it transitioned from a queueing mechanism to one where food banks use a specialized currency to bid for food. Food banks chose very different food than they received before. Small food banks acquired 72% more pounds per client than large food banks at little nutritional cost. This reallocation of food is estimated to have increased its value by 21%, or $115 million per annum. Food banks also sourced food much closer, saving an additional $16 million per annum. Finally, donations of food rose by over 100 million pounds."

"The old assignment algorithm gave each food bank an equal number of (random) pounds of food per needy client. This was problematic for a variety of reasons, despite its perceived fairness. First, food banks differ in their needs. The [old assignment algorithm] allocated an average of 10% of food distributed to food banks, but Feeding America knew little about the other food. This was further complicated by food richness, where some food banks had better access to outside food donations and had different residual needs. Second, food was randomly assigned on the basis of geography, leading to high transportation costs. Third, the allocation system was slow and deterred some donations. 

"Instead of equal pounds per client, the Choice System gives food banks an equal number of shares per client. These are used to bid in first-price sealed bid auctions, run twice a day. Shares can be saved and borrowed, and any shares spent on a given day are recirculated back to food banks that night. Bids can be negative, a feature used to ease donor relations. Through this mechanism, shares allow a food bank to match its purchases to both its permanent and transitory needs and to the geographic location of the donor.

"Despite the benefits that choice allows, many of the practitioners involved in the redesign were initially skeptical of a market-based system. Their concerns were primarily focused on the fear that smaller or less sophisticated food banks would suffer. To ensure equity across food banks, a series of safeguards outlined below were used, among them access to credit and the ability to bid jointly with other food banks. 

"The Choice System went live on July 1, 2005. We consider a variety of outcomes from 2002 to 2011. A feature of the design is that any food bank can purchase its old allocation, assuming that food banks face common prices. As a result, all food banks are at least as well off as before. This assumes that transactions costs are low enough that all food banks engaged with Choice, and a concern raised was that smaller food banks may not do so. We show that food banks quickly engaged, bidding over 200 times a year and winning more than 70 times. Furthermore, small food banks bid more per client than do large ones. We also show that the safeguards implemented to encourage the participation of small food banks were used as intended. We then quantify how different outcomes were under Choice. "

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Earlier:

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Feeding America: Podcast on HBS case study of Canice Prendergast and Feeding America

Friday, November 13, 2015

Canice Prendergast on The Allocation of Food to Food Banks

Food fight in California: Foie gras is legal for private consumption from out of state providers

 The Ninth Circuit has confirmed a nuanced lower court verdict about foie gras, in the latest episode of a long running California food fight about gavage, the force feeding of ducks:

California court okays import of foie gras from out of state, barred in 2012. The law, passed in 2004, went into effect in 2012 and banned the sale of the delicacy if produced by force feeding geese or ducks.

"A California law that effectively bans foie gras sales in the state was limited in part on Friday. Californians can continue purchasing the controversial pate from out-of-state retailers, the ninth circuit court of appeals said in a ruling.

"The law, which passed in 2004 and went into effect in 2012, bars the sale of foie gras if produced by force feeding geese or ducks, according to Courthouse News Service. As the mousse is traditionally produced from the engorged livers of force-fed geese and ducks, the legislation is a near-prohibition.

‘It’s just gorgeous’: rare deep-sea dragonfish spotted off California coast

Read more

"The ninth circuit’s decision upheld a lower court’s 2020 ruling, which also permitted the shipping of out-of-state foie gras through third-party delivery companies, according to the Associated Press."

"This ruling is only applicable to people who purchase foie gras for their individual use; California law still bars retailers and restaurants from selling or giving away foie gras. The law has been challenged repeatedly since its enactment."

Eliminating cruelty (and methane) from the food chain: lab-grown ("no-kill") meat

 The Guardian has the story:

World’s largest vats for growing ‘no-kill’ meat to be built in US by Damian Carrington

"The building of the world’s largest bioreactors to produce cultivated meat has been announced, with the potential to supply tens of thousands of shops and restaurants. Experts said the move could be a “gamechanger” for the nascent industry.

"The US company Good Meat said the bioreactors would grow more than 13,000 tonnes of chicken and beef a year. It will use cells taken from cell banks or eggs, so the meat will not require the slaughter of any livestock.

"There are about 170 companies around the world working on cultured meat, but Good Meat is the only company to have gained regulatory approval to sell its product to the public. It began serving cultivated chicken in Singapore in December 2020.

...

"“I think our grandchildren are going to ask us about why we ate meat from slaughtered animals back in 2022,” said Josh Tetrick, the chief executive of Good Meat’s parent company, Eat Just.

“Cultivated meat matters because it will enable us to eat meat without all the harm, without bulldozing forests, without the need to slaughter an animal, without the need to use antibiotics, without accelerating zoonotic diseases.

...

"Cultivated meat has not yet been approved for sale by the US Food and Drug Administration. 

...

"Another cultivated meat company, Upside Foods, raised $400m in April, in part to fund a commercial-scale facility to produce thousands of tonnes of meat a year.

...

"Other companies with facilities for cultivated meat include SuperMeat, Mosa Meat, Future Meat Technologies and the seafood producers Wildtype and Shiok Meats. There are also many companies making plant-based meat replacements."

Xenotransplantation and pork chops

 There's been recent news about xenotransplantation, with attempts made to transplant kidneys or hearts from genetically modified pigs into humans.  Those haven't been successful yet, but the organs weren't immediately rejected, because the special pigs involved don't have the alpha-gal sugar molecule on their cells that non-human mammals have and that immediately alerts human immune systems to reject the organ.

But while pig organs aren't ready for transplant yet, it turns out that there are some people who are allergic to the alpha-gal sugar, and hence to meat. But they can eat the meat of these almost-transplant-ready pigs.

The Atlantic has the story:

A Tick Bite Made Them Allergic to Meat. And an organ-transplant company has an unexpected solution. By Sarah Zhang

"It just so happens that the same molecule—a sugar called alpha-gal—that causes the human immune system to reject pig organs also causes the tick-associated red-meat allergy, known as alpha-gal syndrome. To make a pig whose organs could be harvested for transplant, Revivicor first had to make an alpha-gal-free pig. And when it did, the company realized that transplant surgeons weren’t the only ones interested.

"Since last fall, Revivicor has been quietly sending refrigerated packages of alpha-gal-free bacon, ham, ground pork, chops, and pork shoulders to people in the alpha-gal-syndrome community. These packages were free, but Revivicor has told the FDA it is exploring a mail-order business. And so a biomedical company has found itself an accidental purveyor of specialty pork products."

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In the background of this story is Revivicor part of the public benefit corporation United Therapeutics, founded by the remarkable Martine Rothblatt.

 

Repugnance watch: Dog (as) food in Korea--opposition from the President, amidst growing pet ownership

 Here's the story from the Guardian:

South Korean president suggests ban on eating dog meat. Moon Jae-in, a dog-lover, says ‘time has come’ for traditional practice to end. 

"The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, has raised banning the eating of dogs in the country, his office said, a traditional practice that is becoming an international embarrassment.

"The meat has long been a part of South Korean cuisine with about 1 million dogs believed to be eaten annually, but consumption has declined as more people embrace the animals as companions rather than livestock.

"The practice is something of a taboo among younger generations and pressure from animal rights activists has been mounting.

“Hasn’t the time come to prudently consider prohibiting dog meat consumption?” Moon asked the prime minister, Kim Boo-kyum, during a weekly meeting on Monday, according to the presidential spokesperson."

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And from the Washington Post:

South Korea considers ban on eating dog meat as pet ownership grows in the country  By Grace Moon  and Andrew Jeong

 "South Korea is considering a ban on dog meat consumption, officials said Tuesday, a day after President Moon Jae-in ordered the government to explore such a move.

"The news comes after years of public outcries against the roughly 3,000 dog farms still operating in South Korea. Animal rights activists have accused the farmers of holding dogs in horrid conditions.

"Criticism surrounding the consumption of dog meat has grown as more South Koreans adopt canine pets: About 27 percent of South Korean homes have pets, with the majority of them being dogs — up from 17 percent in 2010 — according to the agriculture ministry. (About half of American households reported having pets in 2018, according to the Census Bureau and Simmons National Consumer Study.)"

The market for chicken parts

 Can the wholesale food market come to resemble the modern retail financial market?  The WSJ has the story.

Trading Chicken Feet Is Going Digital. For giants like Tyson, moving millions of pounds of meat from farmers to vendors still requires phone calls, spreadsheets and middlemen  By Julia-Ambra Verlaine

"For agricultural giants like Tyson Foods Inc., moving millions of pounds daily of meat and poultry products from farmers to vendors world-wide still requires phone calls, spreadsheets and personal relationships with middlemen who take a cut. Brokers fees can add up, and it is hard to get reliable up-to-the-minute pricing information. Unlike other markets, inventory and supply aren’t available on a centralized database.

...

"Scott Spradley, chief technology officer at Tyson, the second-largest processor of chicken, beef and pork in the U.S., said large transactions with some external partners still require a fax machine. To fill a supermarket order for chicken, salespeople need to call warehouses peppered across the country. Improving the technology could ultimately bring down the cost of processing and distributing food across the country.

...

"The more middlemen involved, the higher the cost. Before a steak ends up on an American dinner table, it goes through slaughterhouses that process and package the meat. While large retailers like Costco Wholesale Corp. or food chains like McDonald’s Corp. have direct contracts with producers at fixed rates, small restaurants and local suppliers have to go through protein brokers including Louis Dreyfus Co., or redistributors such as NebraskaLand.

“It’s an archaic industry that relies on an old-boy network, a bit like foreign exchange in the 1980s,” said Mr. Honey. “We are trying to cut the fat out that brings the price up.”

...

"Companies like Nui, populated with former traders, are seeking to build streaming platforms that centralize supply and give access to smaller players at better prices. Industry publisher Urner Barry is like a Bloomberg in the meat, fish poultry industry—providing data, news and market pricing on lamb, pork, turkey, eggs and more.

"Urner Barry, founded in 1858, upgraded its electronic platform called COMTELL over a year ago. It supplies brokers, restaurateurs and supermarkets with prices on over 15,000 products ranging from chuck roll to West Coast chicken drumsticks.

“Unlike the past, people are coming into this industry that have a finance background,” said Russell Barton, a COMTELL director at Urner Barry. “They are treating the meat and poultry markets like analysts treat the stock market. They aren’t content with a static price sheet.”

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One of the companies mentioned in the WSJ story is the New Zealand based Nui (https://www.nuimarkets.com/our-platform/)

Global chocolate production and consumption

This map  of cocoa production and consumption from the Cocoa Barometer 2020 would make it easy to guess which way is North (were it not for Australia)...

 

Global markets in antiquity: olive oil and wine

Markets are ancient human artifacts, and a recent paper in the EJ suggests that markets of global scale, based on comparative advantage and international trade, are older than previously recognized.  Global (or at least international) agricultural markets are ancient, according to pollen data on crops and population in ancient Greece:

Landscape Change and Trade in Ancient Greece: Evidence from Pollen Data  by Adam Izdebski, Tymon Słoczyński, Anton Bonnier, Grzegorz Koloch, Katerina Kouli, The Economic Journal, Volume 130, Issue 632, November 2020, Pages 2596–2618, https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa026

"Abstract: In this article we use pollen data from six sites in southern Greece to study long-term vegetation change in this region from 1000 BCE to 600 CE. Based on insights from environmental history, we interpret our estimated trends in the regional presence of cereal, olive and vine pollen as proxies for structural changes in agricultural production. We present evidence that there was a market economy in ancient Greece and a major trade expansion several centuries before the Roman conquest. Our results are consistent with auxiliary data on settlement dynamics, shipwrecks and ancient oil and wine presses."

" We demonstrate that in a period of apparent population growth southern Greece decreased its relative production of cereals. We also observe a simultaneous increase in the relative importance of olives and vines. Since southern Greece had a comparative advantage in the production of olive oil and wine, we interpret this result as evidence of a trade expansion. The growing demand for wheat could only have been satisfied by massive grain imports, perhaps from the Black Sea region, which were offset by exports of olive oil and wine. These commodities were in high demand in Greek colonies and other neighbouring areas, which needed them for cultural reasons but were not always able to produce them locally."

Grocery supply chains: TNR reviews "The Secret Life of Groceries"

 The New Republic reviews The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket, by Benjamin Lorr,  (It tells you more than you want to know about supply chains, from farmed shrimp in Thailand to American long haul trucking...)

There’s No Such Thing as Ethical Grocery Shopping--“The Secret Life of Groceries” exposes the dark secrets of America’s food supply. by Josephine Livingstone

Having read the review but not the book, it sounds like a broad based followup on this 2015 story from the Guardian:

Shrimp sold by global supermarkets is peeled by slave labourers in Thailand

by Associated Press: Margie Mason, Robin McDowell and Esther Htusan in Samut Sakhon and Martha Mendoza in Washington Mon 14 Dec 2015

Foie gras sale ban in CA doesn't rule out interstate commerce

The Mercury News has the lastest twist on the long running saga of foie gras in California:

Foie gras ruling puts it back on Californians’ plates, but not on restaurant menus
Delicacy can be sold, shipped by out-of-state producers; reselling it remains verboten

"Foie gras can again be legally shipped to Californians for consumption at home, according to a new ruling. But diners won’t find the fatty goose and duck livers back on restaurant menus.

"U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled Tuesday in Los Angeles that the sale of foie gras doesn’t violate the law if the seller is located outside of California and the product is brought into the state by a third-party delivery service, the Associated Press reported, adding that the California attorney general’s office is reviewing the decision.

"However, foie gras still can’t legally be resold — which means restaurant sales are prohibited, according to attorneys for both the plaintiffs and defendants.
...
"The issue of whether foie gras can be produced and/or sold in California had been simmering in courts for years.

California’s ban on the production and sale of foie gras (pronounced fwah grah) originally went into effect July 1, 2012, eight years after SB 1520 (by then-Sen. John Burton) was signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 2004."
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See all my posts on foie gras.

The fall and rise of food supplies in Covid-19 India, by Matt Lowe and Ben Roth

Pandemic lock downs gave food supply a shock in Indian markets, but they have recovered.

COVID Lockdown: How India's Food Supply Chain First Tightened and then Recovered
"Food supply shortages, if any, are driven by state level policy making, rather than consumers’ and suppliers’ fears of contracting COVID-19."
by Matt Lowe and Ben Roth

"In mid-April, the supply of fruits and vegetables at Azadpur, Asia’s largest fruit and vegetable market, had fallen about 50% since the start of India’s nationwide lockdown.

Two months later, updated nationwide data shows that India’s food supply chain appears to have recovered, operating at levels comparable to the same time last year. The story of the recovery is best told with four food facts, the sum of which tell its own tale of governance during the COVID-19 pandemic times.

Food fact 1: Food volumes took a huge hit post-lockdown but have steadily recovered.

...

Food fact 2: Food prices increased post-lockdown but have steadily fallen.

...

Food Fact 3: The early disruption to the food supply chain was highly correlated with the incidence of COVID-19 at the state level, but all states appear to be recovering.

...

Food Fact 4: Within states, there was no relationship between the incidence of COVID-19 and the health of the food supply chain, even in phase 1.

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Earlier post: 

Thursday, April 16, 2020

Corona lockdown, and the food supply chain in India, by Matt Lowe and Ben Roth

Supermarkets

There's a nice article about supermarkets in the Atlantic, and how they are organized and supplied,  motivated by nostalgia for one NYC chain, Fairway, that is now going through bankruptcy.

The Pandemic Shows Us the Genius of Supermarkets
A short history of the stores that—even now—keep us supplied with an abundance of choices
by Bianca Bosker

"Most stores open with a colorful bounty of flowers and produce (a breath of freshness to whet our appetites), followed by the flyover expanse of the center store (cans, jars, boxes, bags), followed, in the way back, by milk, eggs, and other staples (pushed to Siberia so you’ll travel through as much of the store as possible, and be tempted along the way). Store designers can choose from a variety of floor plans—forced-path, free-flow, island, wagon-wheel—but by far the most popular is the combination grid/racetrack, with nonperishable items in rectilinear aisles, and the deli, cheese, meat, seafood, and produce departments circling them on the exhilaratingly named racetrack, so called because we scoot faster on the store’s perimeter.
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Here's an earlier story on how and why established retail chains (low debt, own their own real estate) attract the interest of private equity firms:

How Private Equity Ruined a Beloved Grocery Chain
An investment firm was supposed to help Fairway survive. So why is the company now filing for bankruptcy?
by Eileen Appelbaum and Andrew W. Park

Corona lockdown, and the food supply chain in India, by Matt Lowe and Ben Roth

Matt Lowe and Ben Roth look at the effect of India's corona virus lockdown on the food arriving at the big wholesale produce market in Delhi.  They describe breakdowns in the supply chains.

Arrivals Dropped 50% Post Lockdown. When Will Azadpur Mandi’s Supply Return to Normal?
Since the lockdown has been extended till May 3, it has become all the more crucial for the government to intervene and ensure that the broader food supply chain operates smoothly. 

"The disruption can already be seen in Delhi’s (and Asia’s) largest wholesale fruit and vegetable market – the Azadpur mandi – which has seen a precipitous decline in the volume of fruits and vegetables flowing through the market.

"Relative to the three prior years, the volume of produce arriving at Azadpur fell by about half on March 24, and has hovered at around that level since (Figure 1).

Eating cats and dogs banned in Shenzhen

The distinction between pets and pet food just became a little clearer in Shenzhen.

The BBC has the story:

Shenzhen becomes first Chinese city to ban eating cats and dogs  

"The new law will come into force on 1 May.

"Thirty million dogs a year are killed across Asia for meat, says Humane Society International (HSI).

"However, the practice of eating dog meat in China is not that common - the majority of Chinese people have never done so and say they don't want to.

"Dogs and cats as pets have established a much closer relationship with humans than all other animals, and banning the consumption of dogs and cats and other pets is a common practice in developed countries and in Hong Kong and Taiwan," the Shenzhen city government said, according to a Reuters report."

Foie gras and NY farm workers

The NY Times ran this story:

A Luxury Dish Is Banned, and a Rural County Reels
The ban protects animals and slaps wealthy gourmands. But upstate, hundreds of low-wage immigrant laborers are bracing for the impact.
By John Leland, Photographs by Desiree Rios

"Last October, when the New York City Council passed a ban on foie gras as inhumane, Mayor Bill de Blasio called foie gras “a luxury item that the vast majority of us would never be able to afford.”
...
"But two hours northwest of the city, in one of New York’s poorest counties, foie gras plays a much different role. There it is not a luxury splurge but a domino in a fragile local economy. Almost all of the foie gras produced in the United States comes from two duck farms in Sullivan County, where about 400 workers, mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, rely on it for their livelihood.

"Locals say that New York City’s ban, which is scheduled to go into effect in 2022, threatens all the businesses connected with the two farms, from the neighboring farms that supply feed for the ducks to the machine shops that repair agricultural equipment, from the small truckers to the local markets and restaurants that cater to the Spanish-speaking workers.
...
"Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the larger of the two farms, is a sprawling artifact of an earlier disruption, on the site of three former egg farms, which closed when the advent of interstate highways made it cheaper for city stores to get eggs from industrial farms elsewhere.
...
"Opponents of foie gras call the force-feeding process cruel. It’s already banned in India, Israel and Britain. Whole Foods stopped selling the product in 1997, and Postmates stopped delivering it in 2018. The American Veterinary Medical Association takes a neutral position, citing a lack of evidence that birds are harmed by the process, though many veterinarians disagree.
...
"Already hurting from a ban in California, which they say cut their sales by 20 percent, Hudson Valley hired a politically connected lobbying firm, Bolton-St. Johns, and a publicity firm, Millennial Strategies, which represents Lyft, Juul and Starbucks. 

The market for chocolate

The NY Times has the story, just in time for Valentine's Day:

Everything You Don’t Know About Chocolate
The beloved bar has come a long way in quality and complexity. Here’s a primer on how it’s made, and how to choose the best and most ethically produced.
By Melissa Clark

"One of the biggest ethical concerns about chocolate-making is the cacao supply chain. In the current system, the vast majority of cacao beans are sold as a commodity crop without regard to quality. Because farmers aren’t paid more for better beans, there’s no incentive for them to plant finer-flavored cultivars. Nor would they have the money to do so. In West Africa, which grows 60 to 70 percent of the world’s beans, many cacao farmers live below the poverty line, making less than $1.90 a day.
...
"While some chocolate makers buy directly from farmers, most of the micro, bean-to-bar makers in the United States get beans from one of two direct-trade cacao importers, Uncommon Cacao and Meridian Cacao. Both have strong social goals that include living wages for the farmers."

100 years since Prohibition

An op-ed in the NY Times points out that Prohibition didn't start suddenly when the 18th Amendment went into effect in January 1920--it was a popular movement that had started with ordinary legislation.

Why Americans Supported Prohibition 100 Years Ago
Temperance crusaders weren’t crackpots. They were fighting the business of making money off addiction.  By Mark Lawrence Schrad

"The United States had already been “dry” for the previous half-year thanks to the Wartime Prohibition Act. And even before that, 32 of the 48 states had already enacted their own statewide prohibitions.

“With little that differed from normal wartime prohibition drinking habits, New York City entered at 12:01 o’clock this morning into the long dry spell,” this newspaper solemnly noted.

...

"Temperance was the longest-running, most widely supported social movement in both American and global history. Its foe wasn’t the drink in the bottle or the drunk who drank it, but the drink traffic: powerful business interests — protected by a government reliant on liquor taxes — getting men addicted to booze, and then profiting handsomely by bleeding them and their families dry.

...

"For a better understanding of temperance and prohibition, forget Bible-thumping “thou shalt nots.” Think instead about a major industry making outlandish profits by getting people hooked on an addictive substance that could kill them. Maybe that industry uses some of those profits to buy corrupt political cover by currying favor with government and oversight bodies. Let’s call this substance “opioids,” and the industry, “Big Pharma.”

"This is the same type of predatory capitalism that the temperance-cum-prohibition movement fought 100 years ago. Should big businesses be able to use addiction to reap tremendous profits from the poor? If your answer is no, and you were around 100 years ago, you likely would have joined the vast majority of Americans calling for the prohibition of liquor traffic."