I just now decided that I’m 100 percent opposed to Food Safety. Safe, healthy food I like. I even think there is a role for government in food safety. Having such a thing as a Food Safety Institute at the W.K. Kellogg Company in Battle Creek could be a good thing, too. But not when the organization that’s directing it is “an international, non-profit organization that works to develop uniform laws, regulations, and guidelines in the food safety industry.”
It’s that part about uniform laws and regulations that gets me. Uniform laws and regulations are a time-honored method to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Uniform bank regulations across state lines are what enabled a few big banks to gobble up the smaller ones and become too big to fail, leading to financial meltdown and the destruction of our political system.
Uniform laws and regulations are going to kill local food markets and producers in favor of big ones who will be able to maneuver the political and technical intricacies of compliance. The giant conglomerates tend to be annoyed by the fact that Minnesota has different regulations than Kansas. But local regulations mean there are local openings for local food-competitors in Minnesota and Kansas that the big guys would like to eliminate. Under uniform regulations, on the other hand, those who can achieve economies of scale will be the winners who take all.
Maybe Round One of new regulations isn’t going to outlaw the Amish roadside baked-goods sellers that I occasionally patronize on my bike rides in Indiana and Ohio. But eventually they will. It’s a process that has already started.
I suppose the big guys will want to act quickly on this, before too many people catch on to what’s happening to us. And there is a growing awareness. Note the article by Caleb Stegal titled “I Did Taste” at Front Porch Republic:
A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of Kansas secessionists. The participants were rowdy, complaining of economic gigantism squashing them flat and bureaucratic thugs hounding their every move. They were all sick and tired of worker-ant existence in the hive-mind of American groupthink and they wanted out. Despite the quintessentially political nature of the gathering, politics proper never came up. Conservative and liberal meant nothing in that room, and party affiliation even less.
Kansas patriots fomenting disunion? No, though there are a few of those kicking around these parts. These were local farmers organizing a farmer’s market.
It’s people like this that uniform laws and regulations will squash like a bug. And it’s not a bug that would theaten your food safety.
BTW, here’s the best one-liner from the Caleb Stegal article: “Food rots. If it doesn’t rot, it’s not food.”