Comments on: This is a Feature of Nearly All Regulation

By: John Thacker

John Thacker — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:54:58 +0000

Food poisoning issues are one of those things where the coverage has increased even as the likelihood has decreased. Mine safety is a similar issue.

By: Paul

Paul — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:48:57 +0000

Follow the money. I’d like to know if Congresscritter Dingell’s campaign contributions are related to this.

By: Dr. T

Dr. T — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:45:05 +0000

“HR 759 amends the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act to include provisions governing food safety.”

The Food and Drug Administration has been overseeing food safety since its inception in the mid-1930s. That’s why the agency starts with the word “Food.” What Senator Ding-Dong wants is to inject a level of oversight that would quintuple the size of the FDA and add tremendous recordkeeping and labeling requirements throughout all food-related industries. They might as well call it the double-your-grocery-bill and quadruple-your-restaurant-bill law.

And to answer Bob Smith: The US has the safest food supply in the world. Deaths due to food poisoning are so few that they barely register in the statistics. Food poisoning epidemics get much publicity, but that’s because they are uncommon events.

By: CT_Yankee

CT_Yankee — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:21:02 +0000

In the early 80’s I started predicting that the cold war would end when the USSR collapsed of it’s own weight. With everybody watching and reporting on everyone else, no one was left to actually do anything. Now I see us losing the cold war we already won by creating regulations so strict that no American can produce or sell any product or service.

By: Amy Alkon

Amy Alkon — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:53:19 +0000

Bob Smith asks the right question. I lived in New York City for 10-plus years, and ate at street festivals and off hot dog wagons, and now that I live in California, I eat at the local festival and sometimes brownies at a garage sale. And at restaurants of course, large and small, and really tiny. I have gotten food poisoning, in 20 some years of my adult life, fewer than five times. Three times, I think, but memory isn’t my finest feature.

By: Page48

Page48 — Mon, 18 May 2009 05:30:43 +0000

Your observation is absolutely true.

Because of a quirk of fate, I have been dealing with the effects of the Clean Water Act of 1972 for almost 30 years, and have seen the effect you describe first hand.

Prior to the Act, there existed what were then known as the Major Oil Companies and a whole slew of smaller oil companies known as the “Independent” oil companies. The Independent’s were gone by the late 1980’s and the Major’s morphed into what everybody now calls “Big Oil.”
But, to make your point – they persisted.

By: Bob Smith

Bob Smith — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:43:39 +0000

Is there any evidence whatsoever that food safety is a bona fide problem in the US?