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OPINION: Your old mate notes that Italy's government has backed a bill that would ban laboratory-produced meat and other synthetic foods, a move it believes highlights Italian food heritage and health protection.
If the proposals go through, breaking the ban would attract fines of up to €60,000 (NZ $106,000).
The Italian farmers' lobby praised the move and has collected half a million signatures in recent months calling for protection of "natural food vs, synthetic food", and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has also signed.
Ministers have cited Italy's prized Mediterranean diet as their motivation for both measures.
The proposed bill came hard on the heels of a series of government decrees banning flour derived from insects such as crickets and locusts in pizza and pasta.
OPINION: Your old mate reckons townie Brooke van Velden, the Minister of Workplace (or is it Woke Place) Relations is now showing how underemployed she is as a minister by initiating an investigation into whether young children should be banned from collecting eggs on farms and feeding animals.
OPINION: There's an infamous term coined by a US general during the Vietnam war, specifically in reference to the battle of Ben Tre: "We had to burn the village to save it."
OPINION: The sudden departure of Jim Ward, manager of Molesworth Station for 24 years, highlighted some major dysfunction in the way conservation estate is managed in this country - the biggest problem, as the Hound sees it, being idealogues who harp on about "taonga" and use all means possible to block sensible commercial operations on conservation land.
OPINION: While the destruction of NZ's oil and gas industry by Jacinda Ardern's band of merry vandals was virtue signalling on a heroic scale - producing no environmental benefit whatsoever - the politician vowing to make that industry whole again, Shane Jones, is not above a bit of virtue signalling of his own.
OPINION: Your old mate's ear has been chewed off recently by farmers voicing their displeasure with the National Party, particularly relating to how they're treating their farmer base.
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A landmark moment for New Zealand. That's how Prime Minister Christopher Luxon describes the conclusion of negotiations for an India-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement. 
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