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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Except there is no regulation in the USA.

You think there is regulation but congress has defunded all inspection so it barely happens.

That fertilizer plant that exploded was last inspected in the EIGHTIES.

It's just that lawsuits are easier in the USA so that might cause food manufacturers to behave better.

Plus I am starting to see food and supplements now made/grown in China on the shelves in the USA. So how much regulation you think each batch gets? I'd guess something close to zero.

But when congress needs to fly home, well then they will fund things like air-traffic controllers so they do not have to wait on the tarmac like everyone else.

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Except there is no regulation in the USA.

The submitted article is about food products consumed by infants (and is about the U.K. and China, mostly). Your statement "there is no regulation in the USA" is categorically false in regard to food products to be consumed by infants.

http://www.fda.gov/food/foodsafety/product-specificinformati...

Don't eat packaged food. Definitely don't feed it to babies. They are not a pet fish.

Baby won't breast feed - what are you supposed to do? When you've been in the situation it's easier to understand.

>It's just that lawsuits are easier in the USA so that might cause food manufacturers to behave better.

On the other hand, the 2008 melamine scandal in China resulted in executions.

While I am against any governments executing people, it sure would be nice to see decision making executives serve time here instead of just paying a fine.

I mean BP simply paid a fine for all the people they killed. Not one executive even lost a night of sleep, or their vacation home. And I suspect people who buy their products are actually paying for the fine over time, so basically everyone but BP is paying for what they did.

Pull yourself together, your posts are easily proven factually wrong and your garbage posts are destroying HN.

In addition to BP's $4billion criminal settlement, BP executives were individually indicted for manslaughter and other crimes, and many of the subcontractors also face charges:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/11/15/bp-n...

It's pretty melodramatic to tell someone that their posts are "destroying HN", not to mention rude. Why not just politely cite your evidence instead of tearing someone down?

In Germany the milk powder already gets rationed by super market chains.

On the face of it, Germans will complain a lot louder and harder about their food security than Chinese people do, but actually we have very tough regulation that works better than pretty much everywhere else in the world, let alone China...

The Texas plant was fined by federal regulators in 2006.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/18/fertili...

A better question is why local zoning failed to keep the plant away from homes, and why their insurance company wasn't more concerned about conditions at the plant.

Technically, it should have been zoning restrictions keeping homes away from the plant. The town of West actually grew up around that plant - it essentially didn't exist until after the plant opened.

And maybe a little of what Texans like to call "common sense." Of course, you'd need to have enough education to know that fertilizer can explode. Having grown up not too far from West, I can see how the same thing could have happened in my home town, or might still happen in many other towns like West.

If that fertilizer plant had been inspected a month ago, do you think that it would have prevented the explosion?

If it was inspected more regularly I'd imagine the chances of it exploding would have been reduced.

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