Photo: pixelens/Flickr.

When a Malaysian night club was busted and 32-year-old Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was caught with a beer, she knew she was in trouble. Not because alcohol is illegal in the country -- it's not -- but because Kartika is a Muslim.

Under Sharia law -- which regulates the day-to-day life of Muslims, including politics, business, sexuality and hygiene -- consuming alcohol is a major offense. Though non-Muslim in Malaysia would be prosecuted under civil law, Kartika had to face Islamic courts.

"I accept the punishment," she said, according to a Daily Telegraph report. "I am not afraid because I was ready to be punished from day one. [The authorities] hope to use my case as a way to educate Muslims. So go ahead. I want to move on with my life."

Photo: Justusthane, Flickr.

Florida's honeymakers, already adept at catching flies, have lately been buttonholing politicians, successfully pressing for new legislation that experts say should save the state's honey industry.

The Florida legislature this month approved a bill prohibiting the production and sale of adulterated honey -- a racy-sounding term that encompasses the honey-fructose blends and chemically treated honeys that have flooded the market over the past decade. While Florida is the first state to issue an official honey standard, Nancy Gentry, who chairs the Florida Honey Bee Technical Council, says as many as 28 states are contemplating similar legislation.

"We're already seeing significant changes," Gentry reports. "We're going to take blended honey products off the shelf in Florida."

The American honey industry was decimated in the 1980s by the Varroa mite, which took down more than 20 percent of hives nationwide.

Whiskey, gun. Photo: Swift Benjamin, Flickr

Tennessee restaurateurs are fighting a new law that threatens to enshrine a tradition they believe is best left in the Old Wild West.

Unless a judge grants a last-minute injunction, Tennessee residents with the proper permits will be able to carry their concealed, loaded firearms into restaurants serving alcohol starting this coming Tuesday. That makes Tennessee the first state in the nation to expressly allow folks to tuck their guns into hidden holsters and sidle up to the bar.

Attorney David Randolph Smith, who's representing 10 citizens opposing the law, says in what some might consider an understatement, "the problem with having guns where alcohol is served is that fights and breaches of the peace are known to occur."

Or, as Nashville songster Travis Tritt put it more lyrically in one of his biggest hits: "Each time I drink, I start to think I'm 10-feet tall and bulletproof."

Ah, to be Chef Gordon Ramsay and to have free time to sit around and spout ridiculous nonsense.

His newest attention-getting quote? His Highness thinks that restaurants should be fined for using out-of-season vegetables. Yep, fined.

The money quote: "There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only." Now, I'm all for using in-season fruits and veggies - we all know they're more flavorful, more fresh, and usually more decently priced - but stringent laws?

If I want to order summer squash in the dead of winter, or a strawberry tart in October, or pumpkin soup in July, that's my prerogative, dude. Don't take that away from me.

Effective immediately, a federal appeals court says that all New York restaurants must post their food's caloric information on menu boards, and should begin no later than tonight at midnight.

The bill will apply only to restaurants with 15 establishments or more, and demands that the calorie counts be printed in the same font and size as normal menu information (even if this means making the rest of the menu's text teeny-tiny).

Fines will be instated beginning July 18 if restaurant owners do not comply with the new law.

Restaurant owners will fight out the case again in court on June 9, when the showdown will likely begin again.

We're big on the taco trucks here at Slashfood. We've blogged about them again and again, so it's appalling to hear that Los Angeles lawmakers made it a misdemeanor crime to stay parked in one spot for longer than one hour. Truck owners can be punished with a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail.

The main reason the law was passed? Local business owners were complaining that vendors - like the taco trucks - were taking away the business of the their brick-and-mortar restaurants. The restaurateurs were also peeved because they are forced to pay more bills than the vendors do, so the competition is "unfair."

The part that really kills me, though, is that the president of the local Merchant's Association was quoted as saying, "I don't want to put anybody out of business, but it's the fairness of it all...It's a big victory for the merchants, and it's going to clean up the area."

After a decision earlier this month by Pennsylvania lawmakers to remove all mention of hormone-treated cows on milk containers, Governor Ed Rendell vehemently disagreed and reversed the issue, allowing the references to stay. The decision was initially enacted because State Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said the labels might cause consumers to think the treated milk was somehow inferior to non-treated milk, therefore slowing sales.

Why the sudden change? Rendell, along with the Consumers Union, dairy farms, and even Ben and Jerry's representatives thought that consumers deserved the right to know how their drinks were being produced. However, dairies that do choose to label their milk as "hormone-free" also have to list a disclaimer that their milk is no safer than milk that does contain hormones. This is because, despite rumors that hormones cause girls to hit puberty earlier or cause certain types of cancer, no research has proven either of these statements.

However, this hasn't stopped Canada from banning use of the hormone, which is used because it supposedly boosts milk production by 10%. Canada's reasoning? They say it causes mastitis, or udder infection, and reduces the number of pregnancies.

What do you think? Do you want to know whether or not your milk comes from hormone-treated cows? And how much does this fact - whether or not the cows were treated - affect what kind of milk you buy?

Don't get too excited from the headline.

Bars and restaurants in California aren't going to be giving away all their beer, but this year, for the first time, they will be permitted to give out free samples of beer, much in the same way that free samples of wine and spirits are sometimes given out to promote new brands or new products from those industries.

Previously, beer companies could only offer tastings at their own plants or breweries, but the new law allows for up to 8-ounces per person per day, to be given away promotionally, provided that it is served in a glass at an establishment that already serves beer or spirits. The tastings can last no more than one hour and can only feature one type of beer, which effectively prevents consumers from having more than those 8-oz (without paying for more, anyway). St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch was the driving force behind the new law, pushing the issue on the grounds that existing law excluded a major portion of the beverage industry. They plan to offer tastings of some of their seasonal products in the future.

The primary objectors to the legislation were the religious groups behind the California Council on Alcohol Problems, which basically tried to say that all beer tasted the same (unlike wine, in their opinions) and that this would cause drinking problems. Clearly, legislators did not agree with their thinking and neither would any of the many beer lovers out there, all of whom can attest to the fact that beer does vary from brand to brand and even batch to batch.

In spite of the laws in Chicago and the thread of a fine if they are broken, many Chicago area chefs are planning on turning their restaurants in to "duckeasies" for New Year's Eve diners, adding foie gras to one or more menu items on the grounds that the "holidays just wouldn't be the same without a little fattened liver." Restaurants that will be serving foie gras include Gioco, Wave in the W Hotel Lakeshore and Cyrano's Bistrot & Wine Bar, among others.

City health officials are not surprised by the news, saying that there are some restaurants that never stopped serving the stuff. Health inspectors say that looking for the fatty livers is "without question the least-important thing [they]'re called upon to do" and some chefs even report that their health inspectors have turned a blind eye to it when it is in plain sight.

The Big Island City Council in Hawaii has just passed a resolution to require coffee sellers to use more Kona Coffee in their "Kona coffee blends." Currently, the required minimum amount for a coffee to be labeled with the Kona blend term is only 10% of the beans. The new resolution ups the amount to 75% - an increase the growers and officials say is necessary to protect the Kona coffee name and reputation, as well as the financial well-being of the growers. They borrowed the 75% standard from California wine growers, who require that 75% of the grapes used in a wine to come from California grapes.

Proponents of the change, which passed through the council in a unanimous vote, say that not only will this protect the (wee deserved) reputation of Kona coffee as a luxury product, but it will ultimately prove to be better for consumers, who will know with certainty what they are paying for when they buy a Kona Blend and won't end up overpaying for a substandard product that bears the region's name.

Today, the board of health in New York is going to vote on whether or not the city will ban trans fats from restaurants. If the ban passes, eateries will have until July 2008 to eliminate all but 0.5g of trans fats per serving from their food. Restaurateurs are anxious, many worried that the quality of their food - by which they mean the taste - will suffer if the ban is accepted. While we wait to hear the ruling, what are some common sources of trans fats in our food? Forbes has named their five worst offenders in terms of the amount of trans fats they contain. They picked prepared and prepackaged foods; stick margarine; and chips and crackers fried in partially hydrogenated oils. Many breakfast foods, from donuts to pancakes, contain trans fats because they are either fried in type of partially hydrogenated oil or are claiming to be lower in cholesterol, since maybe breakfasters worry about the potential health risks of adding butter to their eggs. The most surprising item on the list is the fact that they name kosher baked goods as being at a high risk. The reason is that they are more likely to use partially hydrogenated shortening in place of dairy ingredients, like butter.

New York's Board of Health is getting a lot of attention for their proposed ban on trans fats at restaurants in the city, but there is another proposal on the table that could have an even bigger impact on the dining community in NYC. The Board of Health is considering requiring some restaurants - beginning with chains and fast food establishments - to list the caloric content of their menu items on the menu. Not only that, but the calorie count must be "in type that is as large 'as the name or price of the item.'"

The NY Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is "intent on creating the nation's most rigorous system of calorie disclosure in restaurants" - which has restaurant owners worried about what they're going to serve. Chefs already admit that calories and fat aren't exactly major considerations when they are planning menus and restaurant owners are concerned that their offerings will have to change to such a degree that people won't want to eat out anymore. But the smaller eateries don't have to worry just yet because the rules will only apply to "restaurants with highly standardized menu items" that "already make their caloric content available on the Internet, in brochures or in some other format."

While some producers might balk at this legislative change, it is one that will add a little more clarity to the California wine industry. Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill last weekend that prohibits wineries from using "Sonoma" as part of their name unless at least 75% of the grapes used to produce it were grown in Sonoma County. "Sonoma transcends a county name and has become nearly a brand name synonymous with quality wine produced by some of the greatest vintners in the world," Schwarzenegger said. A similar decision was reached last year regarding Napa wines and regulations may eventually be put in place to regulate other wine-growing areas, such as Mendocino County, and restrict the use of those names.

Not too many wines should be affected by the change, but any brands that are out of compliance will have until December 31st, 2008 to change their labels to reflect a non-Sonoma origin. A California appellation will probably be used in place of county references for these wines.

A bill that bans the sale of horses for human consumption passed in the House yesterday and is an important step in protecting an animal that is an icon of American culture. Though they are classified as livestock, most regard horses are companion animals due to the unique working relationships that they form with people, through work as cart and police horses and their performance in sports and recreational activities. There are three slaughterhouses in the US, all foreign-owned, that process horse meat for human consumption in places like Japan and parts of Europe. About 90,000 horses from the US are killed each year, either at those plants or after being shipped across borders to slaughterhouses in Mexico and Canada.

The bill still has to pass through the Senate before it becomes law, but this is generally regarded as a huge victory for those in the horse industry - except for those who profit from the horse slaughter industry, of course - across the country.

Canada does not have a country-wide organic certification system - not yet, anyway. Organic farming and ranching is an almost $1 billion dollar industry in the country, but currently, the farmers cannot seek certification from a central source. Some are certified by the US Department of Agriculture, which would be required for export to the US anyway, and farms in Quebec and British Colombia are regulated by rules put in place by the individual provinces.

A new system would allow for a "Canada Organic" label, increasing awareness of the farmers nationally and internationally and the country has been working on developing a standard set of guidelines and regulations since 2004. Recently, the process was sped up to meet a deadline set by the EU that would prohibit uncertified organics from trade after December 31st. Such a ban could cost Canada millions of dollars, so after much deliberation, a draft of the new rules was published on September 2. It will be up for discussion and revision for 75 days, at which point it will become law.