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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Food safety laws are a good example. By acting as a floor on manufacturer and restaurant hygiene and ingredient quality, they help the poor a fair bit more than the rich.

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They also conveniently keep volunteers and churches from feeding the homeless, so subsidized corporations can handle that.

One needs only to taste legit French cheese, compared with, say, Austrian manufactured French cheese, to know food quality laws have little to do with actual food quality, and Austria has one of the strictest food legal systems in the World.

Food laws are about safety, not taste.

> One needs only to taste legit French cheese,

Not sure how you got from food safety to how much you like the taste of particular cheese, but to me they're very different problems. I'm only talking about food safety.

> They also conveniently keep volunteers and churches from feeding the homeless, so subsidized corporations can handle that.

Not generally, but perhaps in your area. Where I am there are special exemptions for charitable organizations giving out food: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/EH/Food/lscfo.asp

There are still some requirements, which I think is good. Nobody, homeless people included, should receive unsafe food.

Real French cheese is made from raw milk, which is banned under USA food safety laws. It is objectively much tastier than the pasteurized stuff, and nobody dies from eating it.

Ah, yes, taste, the most objective of the senses ...

'the dress' would like a word with you

In France around three people per year die from eating it. It's seen as an acceptable cost.

It may be subjectively more tasty, but it's objectively more dangerous. E.g:

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/05/what-are-the-odds-840...

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.htm...

But this all seems pretty far afield from my point, which is that food safety laws benefit the poor. I am happy to believe that some dangerous food, like casu martzu or blowfish sushi, is also very tasty. But taking risks for exotic, connoisseur food experiences is also generally the provenance of the rich. So it seems like this also proves my point.

Could you link me to something showing that that's an issue? Because the issues people run into as volunteers that I've hard about tend to be city ordinances, not state or federal food safety requirements.

Further I'm aware of Food Not Bombs winning a case by claiming an expressive first amendment right to share food.

This is just one of many ordinances countrywide, that was fought during #OperationFeedTheHomeless

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-homeless-feedi...

Though local ordinances, they require certified and licensed establishments, so it still rolls back to the original issue.

At least in this case, it is not done through food safety laws. They specifically ban "group feeding". From the article: "It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall".

The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much as anybody.

For example milk started to be regulated more only after someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect.

The rich do need to eat, but they can and generally do eat from places with much higher margins and higher-value brands. Those places have less incentive to cut corners and more incentive to keep their customers healthy. The poorer you are, though, the more constrained your choices are and the more risk you may have to take. Food safety laws act as a quality floor (or a risk ceiling if you prefer), so they help poor people more than the rich.

While this is true, the OP's argument could also include other reasons they wanted this such as avoiding costly sickness in their employees.

I can assure you that amazon and walmart care at least a little about the health of the minimum wage workers they depend on to move inventory.

Amazon is famous for not caring about the health of their workers, compared to competitors in the same industry. They pay above the market and replace the market's healthy workers with workers with health issues. They don't care to optimize their process towards worker health as currently the supply outstrips their demand.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers-suffer-...

But I do agree with your general argument, a healthy workforce is better for a country's economy.

Rich people can eat at at places to nice and clean that the work areas are probably cleaner than some of the tables and chairs in the customer areas of low end dining places.

The sources rich people buy their food from have historically been less likely to be unsanitary.

A lot of our food safety regulations are a result of public outrage over horrendous conditions in factories that produced low cost foodstuffs primarily eaten by the poor in the early 20th century.

Though you could easily argue that the rich still benefit from these laws because they help insure a healthy labor pool.

Compliance with those laws help big ag and Starbucks WAY more than small farmers and small cafes, and pose barriers to entry.

How does compliance help them more? I'd think it's just the opposite. E.g., I live in a city that posts health department scores in every restaurant. This makes me more likely to eat at a small place because I can know that they're not cutting corners on safety. Whereas, having worked in high school at a large chain restaurant, I would expect those places to do well just through corporate persnicketiness.

I agree they pose a barrier to entry, but I think that's good. People not ready to run a clean kitchen should are not ready to serve food. Now it's possible that the bar is unnecessarily high in places. But I live in a city with lots of restaurants and a relatively low number of chains, so I'm sure it's not always the case.

Regulatory capture. Make complying with rules burdensome enough, and only the bigger players can stay in compliance.

For a long time, Wisconsin was a perfect example. Home canned goods were allowed to be sold, but home baked goods were not, even though canning involves many more safety risks. The Wisconin Bakers Association successfully lobbied against legislation, but home baked goods were eventually allowed after a two year lawsuit. Even after the lawsuit, the Wisconsin agricultural department insisted that "baked goods" were limited to those items that contained wheat flour. It took another lawsuit concluding in 2021 to expand baked goods to include all non-perishable baked goods (gluten-free products, etc).

Most states don't even allow this "cottage food" industry.

Granted, I'm not arguing that some grandma selling kolaches down at the farmer's market is going to build the next Hostess brand, but everyone starts somewhere.

So in your example, "big ag" is... people who do canning? The industrial bakeries supposedly threatened by home bakers selling at farmers' markets?

I'm willing to believe there are actual examples out there, but this is not it. Starting a bakery is not hard. I've traveled extensively in Wisconsin and there are plenty of small bakeries. And at least here in CA, a common way to get started building a food business is to rent time in a shared industrial kitchen. That suggests there are plenty of ways for people to get started, and that food safety laws are not a big burden.

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