Food safety question

[mkelley_25]

I listen to NPR news on the way to work each morning, and a couple of weeks ago, one of the guests was the editor of a major medical magazine (I cannot remember his name or the magazine) which was "turning 100 years old."  He was being asked about the concerns of doctors and medical issues in general 100 years ago, and one of the big stories from 1910 was the fact that there were issues with sellers taking the rotten eggs that they couldn't sell to people at the market, and instead selling them to bakers, who were using them to bake cakes.  Needless to say, people who ate these cakes were getting sick, and some even died; but, because of the lack of good health care 100 years ago, they couldn't prove what actually caused the sicknesses and death. 

Thus, one of the first "government-sponsored food safety regulations" was born.  Lately, I have been hearing a lot about increasing food safety regulation, which will most likely lead to higher food prices, more government intervention, red tape and inefficiency.  However, without these regulations, I wonder what kinds of "scams" these companies would pull to try to "get away" with things which would be morally wrong (selling rotten eggs to bakers) but not necessarily "illegal."

I have said this 1,000 times, but I feel as though without some form of regulation, the powerful will ALWAYS take every advantage they can over the weak.  It just seems to me that this is human nature.  So, if the government is not the right mechanism to drive regulations such as food safety, and we KNOW we cannot trust the industry to monitor itself, how would a Libertarian address such an issue?

[vern]

Excellent question.  I have the same concerns regarding regulation.  While I see the inefficiency, corruption and hypocrisy that comes with it, I'm not against the idea in principle.

Local farmers in western PA are concerned that imported food doesn't carry the same weight of regulation that domestic food carries.  That's one issue.  But you're raising the issue of the role of government re: food safety.

There are some, as you point out, who would rely on tort laws and civil suits to resolve any safety issues.  I don't see it that way, but that's me.  I think the role of government is to protect us... without violating our rights in the process.

If you sell me an egg, I should expect it not to contain horrible poisons or whatever.  Caveat Emptor doesn't apply.  There has to be some way for me to have confidence in the market so that when I buy 1 pound of something, I get 1 pound; that when I buy an egg, it has an expiration date.

Does this mean I believe in all the reg's we have now?  No.  But I do believe a new regulatory model should be developed.  Something without corruption and hypocrisy would be nice.  So far I haven't seen it.

[Mik]

I think if you look at it from the perspective of whether this is an area where government can secure rights it becomes a little clearer. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was a way to secure the rights of people and correct market abuses. It was getting fraud out of the market. Things like farm subsidies, price floors and excessive food regulations tend to distort free markets and curtail the rights of people, in addition to helping the larger corporate farms and hurting the small family farms there were ostensibly enacted to protect.

Our farm used to do certified organic produce, back when it was a voluntary certification that met strict standards. Once it became federally regulated, not only did the standards decline, so larger corporation could put the certification on their products, the cost of the certification went through the roof. Our small farm could not longer afford to be certified organic, even if we had wanted to be.

There are repercussions from having a federal policy for both cheap food and cheap energy. It leads to agriculture that relies on petroleum-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. It encourages wasteful land practices like large-scale monocropping. It encourages large-scale farming in remote places from population centers, so the ability to transport and store food become priorities over taste and nutrition. Large-scale animal operation actually increase the likelihood of food contamination and the spread of food-borne illnesses, not only by having stressed animals, but by the very nature of the processing itself. Contamination is guaranteed to be spread along big, fast-moving processing lines.

The answer doesn't lie in more regulation, but in promoting free markets. The nonsense about certified kitchens and safe food handling regulation being needed to reduce the chances of food-borne disease is extraordinary. If I take a bucket of water into the field to wash off lettuce as it is picked, that is fine. If I bring the lettuce into the house and wash it off with the sprayer on the kitchen sink I need a certified kitchen license and regular inspections. Someone baking pies for a church bake sale gets regulated while the DEP encourages the use of sewage sludge for agricultural purposes. I was likely the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer that resulted in the outbreak of hepatitis from onions at Chi-Chi's a few years ago.

The progressive legislation at the beginning on the 20th century was meant to prevent abuses by the big guys. The legislation we have today promotes abuses and favors the big guys. That is quite a difference, yet they often get lumped together in conservative rhetoric.