(06-20-2011 07:06 PM)BlazerFan11 Wrote: Smaug and LS illustrate one of the biggest problem with regulation. It causes people to put blind faith in the regulatory agency, automatically assuming it will make things better. Smaug and LS are already completely on board, without even the slightest of evidence to suggest this might improve food safety. You have to wonder how many times people can get burned and still continue to do so. When it fails, the blame will naturally be put on having enough regulatory authority, and the bureaucracy expands even further.
Yep, that's a pretty fair paraphrase of what I said. Why don't we go with that?
Christ. I simply feel that the US Government has a strong role to play in helping to ensure food safety in the USA. Federal food regulations are one of the reasons why we have a relatively safe food supply, not out of the goodness of the heart of farmers and smart, well informed consumers. Like vaccinations, food safety regulation is one of those things that work so well we've forgotten just how badly we need it, and what it was like before we had it. The regulations and the laws exist precisely because of statistical outcomes. Yes, you don't wear your seatbelt and you've never had an accident so you've always been fine. The regs exist because of the impact of statistical processes. Of course the FDA can be unscientific, is very much bound to the interests of big corps, and is sometimes arbitrary and usually untransparent. Some would say inconsistent. And they dumb at least some information down in order to get us to act the way they believe is best, instead of telling the complete truth about food safety & nutrition. Regardless, I believe that government food safety regulation is often valuable and even necessary. That doesn't mean I automatically believe that the government always gets the regulations right, especially when the regulations have been shaped by a heavily-lobbied agency that has a revolving door relationship with the industry it purports to regulate.
You ask for evidence of why it is a good idea to inspect food at their point of origin. Take milk. Milk is not dangerous, but improperly handled or contaminated milk is dangerous. The fact that heifers have udders with a tendency to drag in ****, and that the milk from those udders needs to be packaged and transported far beyond the originating orifice astronomically increases the risk of contamination and the danger of consuming the milk. This is why it is important to inspect food closer to their points of origin. Some of those origins may be overseas. And some of those origins may be in countries with lax food safety regulations.
Now I am actually pretty sympathetic to local food production and participate in a CSA, so I am not dismissive of local, self-policed food, but recently in MN 15 people got sick with E. Coli because a farmer cut corners and sold contaminated raw milk. Now it would be nice to see federal regulations change to accommodate local food markets and producers like this, regardless of their socio-economic status or their ability to meet strident food safety rules. At the very least it should increase food diversity and provide more delicious stuff to munch on, and would allow one to live in their libertarian paradise where they trust their health and well being to local producers. It would also be very interesting to find a bunch of local issues like this and build a Republican platform on it, shifting them away from the religious issues and other associated fear-mongering.
But ask 100 people who want to sell their own food products whether their food will be absolutely pure. Every one of them will say "oh, of course." And then a good chunk of them will work on their merely sponged-down kitchen counters, and make their goods when they have the time and inclination even if they have a cough or diarrhea. Something like raw meats (especially chicken) have a tendency to contain more fecal contaminants that can get you sick, but that the vast majority of food related outbreaks were ultimately due to cross contamination. You'll cook the chicken, fine, but did you wipe down all the surfaces, or did you use a knife to chop tomatoes that you previously used to cut the meat?
Food safety regulations have the ability to impact the above. Those government standards are written to regulate large scale production. Less regulations may be safe for *you* but it is not safe from a national perspective.
Why do you think that locals won't sell ****-contaminated cheeseburgers (or milk, or whatever) to each other? If there's no longer any legal requirement, or even less legal requirement for, say, sanitary slaughtering and processing of meat, some people just aren't going to bother. You are welcome to exhaustively research each piece of food you buy; I'd rather go to the grocery store.
But since you've already built a narrative on what I apparently think that will, won't or may lead to, I guess you win or something like that. The fact that I work in the food industry should cause you no pause.
