Baylen Linnekin, a licensed attorney who holds an LL.M. in agricultural and food law, is the founder and executive director of Keep Food Legal. Linnekin’s writing on food and law has appeared in scholarly publications like the Chapman University Law Review, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Northeastern University Law Journal, Nexus Journal of Law & Policy, and the Journal of Wine Economics. His writing on food and law also appears regularly in popular publications, including the New York Post, Reason (where he writes a weekly online food-law column), the Huffington Post, Baltimore Sun, Washington Times, and elsewhere. He is co-author of a chapter on food and the law in the Routledge International Handbook to Food Studies, an academic textbook, and author of the entry on “food bans” in the second edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.
Linnekin has presented his research on food and food law at University of Chicago School of Law, Harvard University School of Law, Tulane University School of Law, Chapman University School of Law, Northeastern University School of Law, Suffolk University School of Law, Washington College of Law, New York University, Boston University, University of Arkansas, American University, Rochester Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania State University, the Southern Food and Beverage Museum, the La Cocina National Street Food Conference, and elsewhere. Linnekin has been quoted by the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, New York Times, Voice of America, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, Wilson Quarterly, Bloomberg News, Washington City Paper, and numerous other print and online news outlets. He has appeared on Fox Business Channel, Al Jazeera, BBC Radio, Fox 5 WTTG TV (Washington, DC), ABC-7 TV (Washington, DC), Minnesota Public Radio, KCRW, the Laura Ingraham Show, the Rita Cosby Show, the Dennis Miller Show, and many other radio and television outlets. Linnekin is an adjunct faculty member at American University, where he taught Foodways 2.0, an undergraduate class on the many ways emerging social media tools have quickly revolutionized the ways we buy and sell food.
Linnekin enjoys a variety of foods. He kept an organic garden plot in Washington, DC’s best-known Victory Garden for six years. He lives with his partner of two decades, Roxanne, in the Washington, DC area.