Food Producers Threaten to "Go Galt"
By Monica @ 12:45 PM   
Over the past several months, there's been an enormous wave of concern over "Obamacare." Even the CEO of Whole Foods condemned Obama's healthcare plan. Some doctors have even threatened to go on strike. I highly recommend a good resource on the current "healthcare" debacle: We Stand Firm.
But much less attention has been given to some recent food legislation bills. However, the proposed increase in "food safety" regulations are having the exact same effect: producers of food are threatening to go on strike.
I've written about the most recent legislation in question, HR 2749, here. From a BusinessWeek article by David Gumpert entitled Small Food Producers Question Greater FDA Powers, here's a brief summary of HR 2749:
There's a big push in Washington to pass new food safety legislation. The House has already passed a major bill, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, which would significantly expand the Food & Drug Administration's authority to oversee food companies, and the Senate is expected to act on a similar version once its recess ends after Labor Day. President Barack Obama has indicated he will sign whatever the legislators finally approve. The intensive action is coming in response to a number of highly publicized food recalls involving everything from peanut butter to spinach to cookie dough to raw hamburger over the last three years. The new law would seem to reduce the chances of food contamination by clamping down on producers—requiring detailed, written, quality plans, more frequent FDA inspections, and tough penalties for violations.
These "written food safety plans" have been estimated to cost thousands of dollars to enact. If the idea of medical service providers going on strike bothers you, how about producers of food? Sound too implausible to be true? David Gumpert writes: For Destandau, the latest federal efforts to crack down on food producers is part of a long-term trend. When he started in business in 2003, he had one inspector to deal with, from the California Food & Agriculture Dept. Now he deals with more frequent and costlier inspections from both the CDFA and the county health department. As Destandau contemplates the addition of FDA inspectors, he considers leaving the U.S. entirely. "Right now, we are seriously looking at moving to Australia," he says. Of course, as with healthcare, the increased regulatory burden would not cause food production to grind to a swift halt. However, a certain number of food producers would simply stop producing -- and quality and choice would gradually decline over the coming years and decades.
The true answer to food-borne illness is a free market. That means de-regulating large and small producers alike and de-regulating things like raw milk. Smaller food producers and small farmers often like to mention that large food producers cause food-borne illness on a much wider scale and it is harder to track. These points are true, but overall, food-borne illness rates are remarkably low.
Even so, mistakes, negligence, and fraud all happen. No amount of regulation will take that fact away. Producers, if they make a mistake or commit fraud, should be held responsible for the food they produce. One of these means is through objective tort law. Consumers also need to be responsible. In 2009, one would expect various third party inspection organizations to eventually crop up in the absence of the FDA. (They already exist for organic certification, and the standards are more stringent than the USDA's. It should be noted that organizations like NOFA pre-date the USDA organic certification program.)
100 years of experience with the FDA's "food safety" regulations ought to be enough to convince Americans that more nannying by the FDA isn't the answer. We don't need more food safety regulations, irradiation mandates, food bans, and the like. Here are some results of flawed FDA and USDA policies. An Ayn Rand quote is apropo: "One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." If HR 2749 passes, there will be one sure result: reduced quantity and quality at your farmer's markets, local farms, and meat and veggie CSA as they become unable to cope with the costly regulatory burden. Eventually it would happen in the grocery store too. Let's not let it.
Labels: "Safety", Government Idiocy
|
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home