E-RAT-ic Policy

The issue of the week over at the Gotham Gazette deals with the city's Sisyphean efforts to combat the rat. What strikes us, and we've seen the same mantra when Sewell Chan did the story a while back over at the NY Times, is the emphasis on food waste: "Faced with the burgeoning rat population, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani formed a rat task force in 2000. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stepped up the effort. As part of it the city has tried to shift the emphasis from poisoning to depriving rats of their food."

What do you know! Just what we've been promoting with our Intro 133, a bill that would allow food stores and restaurants to use commercial food waste disposers.Isn't it interesting just how disconnected city policy making is. On the one hand, we have the effort to restrict the rat's food supply; while on the other, we have the concerted effort to not even allow a pilot program for waste disposers that would do more for eliminating the rat banquet than any other single measure. Go figure.