The Associated Press ran a story called Buzz and bullets: Gun fans cheer Starbucks’ policy that gives a good indication of a hot topic in the US:

Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun.

Sounds like the start of a bad joke, right?

They make a banana flavored “Frappuccino” now? People drink this? A cinnamon bun on the same order and a case can easily be made that some Americans have lost their senses.

Perhaps he needed the gun to help convince the staff to put the two items on the same order. “Give me as much corn-sweetener as possible, to go, now!”

You think that is funny? There is more, like this sentence:

…about 100 activists bearing arms had planned to go to a California Pizza Kitchen in Walnut Creek, Calif., but after it became clear they weren’t welcome they went to another restaurant.

Walnut Creek? A wealthy white suburban conservative neighborhood was the target of a pro-gun rally? Hardly risky territory for a pro-gun groups, but even with stats in their favor they backed down. Why? Perhaps they realized they didn’t like pizza anyway.

This reminds me of how basic rights are lost on private property. You lose your First Amendment freedom of expression if you step into a Starbucks. Do gun activists feel they should get special treatment for a later Amendment? Start with the first. I have seen some say they believe this is about individual rights, but I doubt they really want to share a stage at Starbucks with speech activists.

Moreover, a security perspective sets aside individual rights and brings it all back to a question of how to manage risk. When those allowed to carry guns are clearly known to have a service role (federal, state, etc.) you have a very different situation. A police officer with a weapon has a uniform, a badge with a number, etc. to make them easily identified as someone trained and trusted with a weapon. This is common around the world because service personnel are essentially trusted. The idea of a random individual carrying a gun onto private property (the individual rights argument) opens a whole different can of worms related to authentication and authorization. How do you, as a customer, let alone a shop owner, make a risk judgment in a world of individuals carrying firearms? In other words if free speech already has been deemed too risky and not allowed on private property for random individuals, one would presume carrying a firearm would be treated the same or even more caution.

Seriously, though, when you think about chain pizza, syrupy coffee and cinnamon rolls this is hardly a story about fundamental rights or even security. Those are just a cover. It tastes more like a marketing campaign with some free press to promote expensive designer fashion food to a group most likely to pay for it — customer relationship management.

An article by the Times Online explains a recent crackdown by authorities on cheese fraud in Italy:

[Luca Zaia, the Agriculture Minister] said there was no health risk, adding “It is not a question of food security so much as of respect for the rules of production”. However he had taken “urgent action” by placing the mozzarella consortium under “special administration” for three months while a committee of police and ministry inspectors investigated.

He said he had acted “because the situation was deteriorating. Over the past two years my zero-tolerance policy has led to the discovery of many causes of food fraud. In November, checks in major supermarkets in Italy found that 25 per cent of the cheese sold as buffalo mozzarella was fake because it contained 30 per cent cow milk.”

Great example of how compliance depends on governance. It is a good thing he has no jurisdiction over the US cheese market or almost the entire mozzarella supply would be abruptly halted. I have tried without much success to find a consistent source buffalo mozzarella in America.

This case is notably different from a security risk that is also mentioned in the article.

Two years ago sales of mozzarella fell after buffalo milk was found to be contaminated with high levels of dioxin from rotting piles of uncollected rubbish in the Naples area. Sixty-six buffalo herds were quarantined and over 100 farmers and dairy producers were investigated for alleged “fraud and food poisoning”. In April last year inspectors found that some buffalo in the Caserta area near Naples had been given somatropine, a human growth hormone, although officials said this did not pose a health risk.

Thus compliance also depends to a large degree on consumer awareness and interests. Governance is meant to be a representation of demand, so risk definition becomes one of the first steps to creating rules for compliance. Risk from dioxins, for example, is much easier to quantify and campaign against than the risk from lack of authenticity. Who is harmed when cheese is fake? Many Americans, in fact, are likely to turn a blind eye to imitation — mozzarella made from cow milk in California or cheddar from cows in Wisconsin. Risks related to the authenticity of cheese may be far less valued than appearance and price — cheap imitations (“generics”) thus build a strong following when no one close to home is hurt by the practice. Only when authenticity issues hurt a domestic source or more immediate health issues appear do calls for governance come forward.

…food for thought the next time you take a bite of mozzarella.