Jurisdictional Mayhem According to the Constitution, the U.S. Congress has the power to regulate trade among the several states, but it does not have the obligation and there is confusion when it does not. The Supreme Court is being asked to intercede on behalf of pork producers who dislike California’s requirements for animal welfare being applied to other states supplying pork products. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court has just ruled that California’s state-level ban on the sale of foie gras does not apply to product purchased by individuals and brought in from other states. For that matter, California farmers themselves can produce foie gras, it just cannot be sold in California. This could open the door to the direct mark...
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.