Hot potatoes

I am delighted that I can now buy irradiated beef at my local supermarket. It’s safer than regular beef but I would buy it just to spite the anti-science hysterics who kept this technology off-the-shelf for decades. Irradiation has recently been approved for Hawaiian sweet potatoes – the expense of the previous technology, methyl bromide fumigation kept these purple spuds out of mainland markets.

Of course, the mainland-based U.S. Sweet Potato Council is worried about competition. Mainland growers produce 1.3 billion pounds annually and Hawaiian output is only 1.8 million pounds leading the Potato Council to a unique argument for protectionism, “Hawaiian production is a mere pittance . . . and therefore, Hawaii should be able to consume every sweet potato they produce and then some.”