Comment by lbenes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lbenes | Hacker News Reader

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How can our government be failing us so miserably? Ensuring that our food is safe and properly labeled should be the most basic duties of a government. And yet they are failing us miserably. In April of 2011, a paper was published showing that 69% of store-bought olive oil was fake,[1] and yet the government has done practically nothing to protect us.

In 2013, there was the Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak causing deadly brain absences in children and making hundreds sick. But nothing was done for over a year.[2] Instead of fixing the problems here, the government reacts by allowing China to process our chicken making the problem that much harder trace.[3]

We’ve let Industry and lobbyists take our democracy from us with their super pacs and regulatory capture. When are people going to get fed up with this and demand that our government starts protecting us instead of the industry?

[1] http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/research/files/report041211fi...

[2] http://www.laweekly.com/restaurants/foster-farms-finally-rec...

[3] https://www.davidwolfe.com/usda-shipping-chickens-china-proc...

Look on the bright side: We got an experiment showing what happens when we let the market solve an issue involving an invisible quality.

The same result applies to software security.

Right! These pesky free markets.

If only we had a government, things like this couldn't possibly happen.

Oh, wait...

A government that actually regulated olive oil would result in fewer incidents of fraudulent olive oil, yeah.

Something something free markets fix everything.

Well, how much is a kid really worth? Sure, if it's your kid, a ton, but really it's like a decade or two before we even start evaluating potential. Losing 10-30% probably isn't that big of a deal.

There are a few influential thinkers who talked about this in the past, Jonathan swift is worth looking into.

Something something information asymmetry problem

Hmmmm.... The gov't has done nothing at this point, yet someone discovered there were fake foods, shared the information and consumers are now aware and avoiding them.

So yeah, I'd say the free markets are working.

And it only took a few decades. And every time there's some major olive oil scandal, we don't end up with less adulterated olive oil.

I don't have an opinion on free vs. regulated, but I wouldn't agree that free markets are working the way you claim.

Well, it looks like the free markets moved faster than the gov't in this case.

So someone doing something is automatically attributed to the free market? Im not sure that is how it works.

Just to add to your links: http://reprints.longform.org/bug-system-hylton

fun quotes:

But when federal limits are breached, and officials believe that a recall is necessary, their only option is to ask the producer to remove the product voluntarily. Even then, officials may only request a recall when they have proof that the meat is already making customers sick. As evidence, the F.S.I.S. typically must find a genetic match between the salmonella in a victim’s body and the salmonella in a package of meat that is still in the victim’s possession, with its label still attached.

> How can our government be failing us so miserably? Ensuring that our food is safe and properly labeled should be the most basic duties of a government.

In the United States food is regulated by the Department of Agriculture. Its FDA regulates food and drug safety. The rest of it works with farmers to increase production and ensure food is produced in volume at the lowest cost.

I think you can see the problem here :-(

We have the same problem at the Department of the Interior which regulates open space and its use and takes care of maximizing the land's economic value (i.e. grants mining and other extractive uses like grazing on public lands).

At least the interior department got free drugs and sex from oil company employees while as far as I can tell the ag department doesn't get that kind of "in kind" industry encouragement: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/washington/11royalty.html

PS: Interior is also responsible with relations with the various tribes, which hasn't worked out too well for them either.

I assume you support increased funding to FDA so they can hire more people and facilities to go after these cases, and that you are persuading others to also support this.

The FDA has its own set of problems. I feel like increasing funding doesn't guarantee that they will spend it on sorting out this fake food business.

Hiring the right people is likely to be more productive than hiring more. The FDA has a "revolving door" problem with the industries it is supposed to be regulating.

From a NY Times editorial on their poor response to a recent issue with supplements:

Much of the responsibility for the F.D.A.’s sluggish response must fall on Dr. Daniel Fabricant, who left a senior position at the Natural Products Association, a trade group for supplement makers and sellers, to head the F.D.A.’s division of dietary supplement programs in early 2011 and who jumped back to the trade association as its chief executive in the spring of 2014. He has been succeeded at the F.D.A. by several acting directors; the current one is Cara Welch, from the same trade group. Both dragged their feet on BMPEA. [1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/opinion/conflicts-of-inter...

You could pay them more. That's the Singapore model of good government (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-01-25/why-singa...).

Who choose to employ the fix to watch the hen-coop? Did they mysteriously get richer at the same time? Is there no government oversight of this?

I think USA needs to invade itself and bring some democracy along.

Isn't there any kind of quarantine period?

This is a Department of Justice problem not an FDA problem FDA is focused on human Heath, not fraud.

Did you really have to link to David Wolfe?

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