Libertarianism and food safety

[armand61685]

Im sure some of you heard about California's beef problem. What do you guys think about the government's role of regulating tainted beef? Frankly, this is disgusting. I'm a big time capitalist, but sometimes I think regulatory agencies are required in situations like this, unless we really show that we can create volunteer consumer groups to watch over these operations.

What does libertarianism say about this?

[Eponym_mi]

Consumer groups could serve this function, similar to how some foods are certified kosher. Check into how much kosher beef is recalled.

[NMCB3]

Well it seems that the government has failed in this instance (recalling beef that has already been consumed) Anything the government does private industry can do better, this situation is no different. Now they will want more money and power to "prevent" this from happening again...Its a vicious yet predictable cycle.

[Kevlar]

They got caught this time. That's the only difference.

The FDA doesn't give a damn about your health.

[SeanEdwards]

Lawsuits, consumer information, and competition should be able to address all consumer product safety issues. Get the government out of the business of protecting unscrupulous businesses, and the people will take care of the rest.

Edit:

Since they're recalling beef that has already been eaten, I think I should send them a bag of previously consumed beef. :P

[Zavoi]

Consumer groups could serve this function, similar to how some foods are certified kosher. Check into how much kosher beef is recalled.
And if there are enough consumers concerned about keeping kosher to support the existence of kosher certification agencies, then so much more so would people support health certification agencies, since the number of people who don't want to get food poisoning is orders of magnitude greater than the number of kosher-keepers.

[Dark Aerow]

The cattle industries, as well as many other industries are hurting because of the grain cost shooting through the roof thanks to ethanol subsidies. Cattle farmers are having trouble competing for grain vs. the government subsidized industries.

I can only assume this will lead to more intense regulation than there already is, thus making it even harder for them to compete.

Here's the breakdown as I see it:

- The corn, ethanol proponents, anti-oil people, environmentalists and others decided it was a great idea to take tax-payer money to help pay for ethanol because it was too expensive to produce or compete against the oil companies who are also taking our tax dollars.

- Politicians decided this was well intentioned and an intelligent stance and decided to go ahead and subsidize ethanol unaware of the unintended consequences of this decision.

- Ethanol can now compete in the market thanks to our tax dollars.

- at face value this has caused Gas prices to remain steady/drop slightly/increase less rapidly (hard to say for certain) the subsidies were successful! yay!

- Of course, in reality we are paying more for gasoline now (e15, e85) we're just paying for it through taxation.

- If this isn't bad enough, this has caused harm to almost every other industry, especially the food industry.

- This is because the ethanol industry uses corn to create ethanol, since they are subsidized the industry increases in size until corn prices get to the point where it's no longer economically feasible to build more ethanol refineries.

- Since corn prices are through the roof, all the other industries who rely on corn to operate are struggling.

- The already heavily regulated cattle industry uses corn, and now has to cut costs, raise prices, or ignore expensive regulatory procedures.

- You are now seeing the beginning of the unintended consequences of those subsidies, and this is only in the cattle industry.

- The already struggling cattle industry has now taken a huge hit to whatever profit they were making.

- This is going to likely result in even more regulation of the cattle industry which will cause more of the same.

The only people that benefit from all this are the ethanol people, corn farmers and a few other select people. Everyone else, especially the consumer. We now are required by law to pay higher costs at the pump (through taxes) more money for beef, more money for food, and because all of these prices are higher we also pay more in almost every other industry in the United States, and even the world. This has many other far reaching effects, i.e. destroying the middle class, increasing the “imagined need” for the welfare state, placing more unnecessary regulations on various industries, etc, etc, etc.

This is what I like to call the ripple effect. One seemingly beneficial and harmless law has once again stolen your wealth and given it to a select few people. Gotta love special interests and there wonderful ability to convince politicians they need our money.

The lesson here: ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS trust the free-market, it’s correct 99.99999999% of the time, that’s like 1 trillion times more correct than the politicians.

[Kludge]

Im sure some of you heard about California's beef problem. What do you guys think about the government's role of regulating tainted beef? Frankly, this is disgusting. I'm a big time capitalist, but sometimes I think regulatory agencies are required in situations like this, unless we really show that we can create volunteer consumer groups to watch over these operations.

What does libertarianism say about this?

Free markets are regulated by the "invisible hand". We, however, do NOT have a free market, we expect the FDA to keep us safe. This is evidently flawed.

Back in the very early 1900's when we had a much more free market, we also had problems with beef safety, so much so that a list of horror stories were compiled into a book titled "The Jungle". This is when and why the FDA was created. But again, the FDA has proven itself incapable at managing our eating well-being (We also happen to have an obesity "epidemic"...). Ideally, an independent watchdog group would keep tabs on these companies, and the companies would then have incentive to keep their quality high.



But even that doesn't strike at the root of the problem. It's the people. Some people commit aggression, always irrational. When people commit aggression, someone is going to be hurt, whether it be a campus shooting, government censorship, eminant domain or "unsafe beef handling". There is NO WAY to effectively eliminate problems like these until we eliminate human irrationality, which will never happen.

I, for one, will be starting an autonomous utopia where automated machines will provide everything I desire.


Edit:

Got off track again... My point was that libertarianism would say government is wasting money trying to "fix" an industry, but isolated incidents such as this will always occur. That's the Libertarian "straight talk".

[armand61685]

You know what, since watching the videos of the cow abuse yesterday, I was appalled at the suffering and pain these poor breathing animals go through before they die, especially when they're sick! Some of these slaughterhouse workers seem like sadists!

I don't care what we think about human rights, individual rights, animal rights, all i know is that the creatures still feel pain (because they have a nervous system!) and emotion (intense fear). They should be free from a life of hell--any civilized nation should respect that. Not only that, because they are in such bad shape, our meat is trashy and could be toxic.

The only way to deal with this, and still like meat, is eat LESS meat (especially beef and pork). Americans eat too much meat. Maybe if we consumed 1/7th less, we could eat good quality portions once or twice a week. By consuming less, this means that cows can be raised in smaller numbers in smaller farms and on open-graze grass fields, and can be handled with care, as opposed to these farm factory hell houses.

Also, by consuming less meat, we could reduce the amount of cows shitting into drainage pipes in these factory farms, and thus leading to our contaminated water.

It just makes me sick how much we consume consume and consume. We'd be a much healthier nation if we rationed our meat.

[Dark Aerow]

You know what, since watching the videos of the cow abuse yesterday, I was appalled at the suffering and pain these poor breathing animals go through before they die, especially when they're sick! Some of these slaughterhouse workers seem like sadists!

I don't care what we think about human rights, individual rights, animal rights, all i know is that the creatures still feel pain (because they have a nervous system!) and emotion (intense fear). They should be free from a life of hell--any civilized nation should respect that. Not only that, because they are in such bad shape, our meat is trashy and could be toxic.

The only way to deal with this, and still like meat, is eat LESS meat (especially beef and pork). Americans eat too much meat. Maybe if we consumed 1/7th less, we could eat good quality portions once or twice a week. By consuming less, this means that cows can be raised in smaller numbers in smaller farms and on open-graze grass fields, and can be handled with care, as opposed to these farm factory hell houses.

Also, by consuming less meat, we could reduce the amount of cows shitting into drainage pipes in these factory farms, and thus leading to our contaminated water.

It just makes me sick how much we consume consume and consume. We'd be a much healthier nation if we rationed our meat.

Forcing people to eat less meat isn't going to work, you're free to spread your message, but thats about the extent of it.

[armand61685]

Forcing people to eat less meat isn't going to work, you're free to spread your message, but thats about the extent of it.

I didn't say any government should force people to eat less meat. Where did you get that? I meant that culturally we have to realize the negatives of eating so much meat and gradually adopt better diets.

[Goldwater Conservative]

If the government misses a problem under our current system (either because they don't care or are just incompetent), tough luck for you and many other Americans. If there was competition, say, between different universities doing tests on consumer products, then there'd be an incentive to perform quality screening. Instead of "USDA" prime beef or FDA-approved medicine, you could choose, for example, from something that was "certified by the Harvard University Institute on Food Safety" or that's "100% up to the standards of the Stanford University Department of Health Studies."

On paper, I actually believe nutritional labels and such are a proper role for government, under the reasoning that information asymmetry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry) can be a market failure, but that doesn't mean they have to do it.

[Nicketas]

....

[angelatc]

Im sure some of you heard about California's beef problem. What do you guys think about the government's role of regulating tainted beef? Frankly, this is disgusting. I'm a big time capitalist, but sometimes I think regulatory agencies are required in situations like this, unless we really show that we can create volunteer consumer groups to watch over these operations.

What does libertarianism say about this?

You're making the libertarian point. We spend billions of dollars "guaranteeing" that the food supply is safe, but it isn't.

Corporatism is largely to blame for that.

Private certifications and even State certifications would be better. Competition always improves efficiency and quality. If, for example, Montana and Wyoming were battling to earn the "best beef!" image, we'd all be better off.

[armand61685]

You're making the libertarian point. We spend billions of dollars "guaranteeing" that the food supply is safe, but it isn't.

Corporatism is largely to blame for that.

Private certifications and even State certifications would be better. Competition always improves efficiency and quality. If, for example, Montana and Wyoming were battling to earn the "best beef!" image, we'd all be better off.

I hate corporatism. And i hate it even more when leftists call mix capitalism and corporatism together.

[jjockers]

Maybe if we consumed 1/7th less, we could eat good quality portions once or twice a week. By consuming less, this means that cows can be raised in smaller numbers in smaller farms and on open-graze grass fields, and can be handled with care, as opposed to these farm factory hell houses.

Also, by consuming less meat, we could reduce the amount of cows shitting into drainage pipes in these factory farms, and thus leading to our contaminated water.

It just makes me sick how much we consume consume and consume. We'd be a much healthier nation if we rationed our meat.

I say this to every Vegan I meet: eat local, grass fed meat. It's better for you, healthier, delicious and humane. We often go out to the farms before investing in a meat product. Always good to know what you are eating and supporting. If you're lucky, you may be able to volunteer at a farm and receive a discount.

[the_british_are_coming]

kludge, aside from the fact that Upton Sinclair won't be found on the FDA's founders list, i think i agree with your principles...


But "The Jungle" was not a "collection of horror stories..." it was a chronicle of life at that time. They weren't horrified anymore than someone who today eats microwaved food at their factory job is horrified...

but they probably should have been. If only we'd been there to tell them.