Although the ordinance does not prohibit a restaurant’s ability to sell, or a customer’s ability to purchase, a substitute or alternative beverage instead of milk or water, patrons will not be offered sodas, fruit juices or any other beverages with children’s meals.

In addition, restaurants that sell kids’ meals must complete an annual self-certification verifying that if they offer children’s meals, they comply with the provisions of the ordinance. Establishments that continue to offer beverages with children’s meals that are not milk or water stand to be fined $100 or more, depending on the number of violations.

The new policy aims to “increase access to healthy beverages for children” and was initially proposed by First 5 Yolo, a children and families commission.

Dr. Harold Goldstein, the executive director of the California Center for Public Health Policy, praised the requirement in a statement release:

“The city of Davis took a bold stand for children’s health last night and in so doing established itself as a national public health leader. While communities all over the country wrestle with the disastrous consequences of growing childhood obesity and diabetes epidemics, Davis drew a line in the sand. The city council showed the powerful role cities can play by passing an ordinance requiring restaurants to serve water or milk as the default beverage in children’s meals. This means that the healthy beverage choice is now the easy beverage choice in Davis restaurants.”

Dr. Goldstein also stated that sugary drinks are the “single largest source of excess calories in our kids’ diets, providing nearly half of their daily sugar intake.” He pointed to restaurants as “responsible for about a quarter of children’s caloric intake.” Parents at restaurants “will now have to ask for soda specifically if they want to serve their child liquid candy instead of a healthy beverage.”

Matt Sutton, vice president of government affairs and public policy for the California Restaurant Association, says policies like these “oversimplify the issue” of healthy choice.

“Restaurants have made a lot of headway in offering a wide selection of menu items to accommodate consumer choice, such as salads and apples with meals,” he told me. “We’ve made all kinds of changes to help address the concern. However, there is no one silver bullet.”

Sutton said kids’ meals are fairly common throughout many restaurants, fast food and sit-down alike, and are generally packed under one price. This ordinance could “have a pretty big impact” on pricing and restaurant operations.

He also pointed to Governor Jerry Brown’s latest executive order mandating water reductions, which bans restaurants from offering water unless patrons specifically request. This is a bit of a “head scratcher,” he told me, as the new Davis ordinance requires restaurants to offer water with kids’ meals.

The policy goes into effect September 1, 2015.

“DAVIS, Calif. (AP) — The former police officer who pepper-sprayed students during an Occupy protest at the University of California Davis is appealing for worker’s compensation, claiming he suffered psychiatric injury from the 2011 confrontation.

“John Pike has a settlement conference set for Aug. 13 in Sacramento, according to the state Department of Industrial Relations’ website.

“Pike was fired in July 2012, eight months after a task force investigation found that his action was unwarranted.”

The elephant in the room that’s rarely mentioned

What’s telling and pathetic is that the AP story doesn’t even note the significance of the fact that Pike’s claim is already going to a settlement conference. It’s not being rejected. It’s being taken seriously, and the likelihood of the claim being honored by administrators is seen as high.

That’s amazing. But not surprising. California is the largest state in the union, and we should have a sophisticated media — a media that has figured out that by any measure the most important single factor in determining whether something gets done in our state government is whether it helps public employees.

And yet not only isn’t this routinely mentioned, the largest newspaper in the state consistently makes the argument that California’s biggest problem isn’t public employee clout — it’s the obstacles facing politicians and voters who want to broadly raise taxes.

Oy. Vey.

By Colin A. Carter

Californians will soon vote on Proposition 37, which requires that genetically modified (GM) food to be labeled in food stores throughout the state. Supporters argue that mandatory labeling would offer consumers greater choice and provide them with more information on the content of the foods they eat. How can anyone argue with such a simple and compelling claim that Prop. 37 will give us more information on food content?

Well, suppose the message isn’t true because the fine print of the proposed mandatory food labeling regulations would result in a much different outcome than promised. The most likely outcome would be a market where food category choice decreases under Prop. 37, rather than increases; and the added labeling information would be very imprecise and downright confusing to most consumers.

Prop. 37 would introduce a double standard for testing for GM purity in organic versus non-organic foods, which should be a huge red flag to voters. The organic industry helped write Prop. 37, and it exempted organic food from the very type of mandatory testing it wants to impose on other food suppliers.

If Prop. 37 passes, organic food may contain GM without violation of the new regulation. But non-organic food would have to comply with an impractical zero percent tolerance.

Suppose the lawyers behind Prop. 37 test two boxes of breakfast cereal, one box “organic” and one labeled as “non-GM.” If the tests come back showing each box has an identical low-level trace of GM (say due to a low amount of canola mixed in with wheat), then the lawyers can go after the supplier of the non-GM cereal, but the organic supplier is exempt.

Higher costs

Consumers who have no interest in GM warning labels will face higher food bills. And those who want to avoid buying GM food will not be better informed.

There are so many exemptions (such as organic, restaurant food, dairy products, etc.) that consumers will not know what percent GM ingredients they are eating if it is organic, a dairy product or restaurant food. At the same time, many food products will end up carrying a GM warning label in case they might have a trace amount of GM. How does such a regulation give consumers a better option for avoiding GM? The answer is that it does not.

Prop. 37 is not about stricter food regulations. Instead, it is about improving business opportunities for some of those behind the initiative.

Consumer activists, lawyers and organic-food groups are behind the initiative; while agribusiness, food manufactures and most retailers are opposed. If implemented, Prop. 37 would constitute the first mandatory GM labeling law in the United States. Similar attempts to pass mandatory GM labeling laws in other states have failed.

Voluntary labeling

Voluntary labeling is a much better solution for those consumers who want more practical information on the content of their food and they are willing to pay for it.

In the U.S. market where GM crops (such as corn, soybeans, canola and sugar beets) are common, zero tolerance for commingling with non-GM is just is not practical and is not even met today by the organic food industry. In fact, U.S. organic food regulations for processed foods require that the food contain at least 95 percent certified organic ingredients — a 5 percent tolerance. Why didn’t the organic industry use their own 5 percent standard for accidental contamination when Prop. 37 was drafted?

Other countries truly interested in mandatory labeling have not taken such an unrealistic zero tolerance approach as Prop. 37. In the European Union, the threshold is 0.9 percent for adventitious presence of GM, which is roughly the level used in California today by voluntary “GM free” labeling schemes such as the Non-GMO Project, a verification process organized by food retailers such as Whole Foods Market.

In Japan, a country much more averse to biotech foods than the United States, the legal tolerance level for accidental presence of GM ingredients in non-GM food is 5.0 percent of the top three ingredients. As a result of a practical labeling scheme, the Japanese consumer can purchase non-GM products, an option that would all but disappear with Prop. 37 in California.

If passed, the full economic effects of Prop. 37 are uncertain. But there is little doubt that the measure will soon end up in domestic and international courts as it would exclude certain foods from the California market due to the zero-tolerance criterion. Federal law, not state law, governs international trade in America.

Food manufacturers and retailers will be unwilling to provide non-GM products because of the litigation it would invite and the difficulty associated with obtaining non-GM ingredients that meet the zero percent tolerance. As a consequence, Prop. 37 would result in many products on the food shelf carrying a GM warning label.

In the breakfast cereal aisle, consumers’ choice would be reduced to either organic corn flakes or corn flakes labeled as possibly containing GM. It might get to the point where there are so many products with GM labels that most consumers would just ignore the labels because they would be everywhere.

Colin A. Carter is a professor of agriculture at the University of California, Davis, and the director of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics.