New at Reason

May 18, 2007

Ronald Bailey asks how much you should worry about contaminated imports.

Comments

Brian Sorgatz|5.18.07 @ 3:55PM|#

The visual for the article is a still from a Saturday Night Live sketch.

|5.18.07 @ 4:16PM|#

FDA inspectors in China found the facilities of the two companies shut down.

Not exactly. One owner razed his factory before the inspectors arrived.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-petfood9may09,0,6710026.story
At least that's the way the Chinese tell it.

|5.18.07 @ 4:23PM|#

Too bad that this couldn't have been caught before people and people's pets died.

That's the problem with assuming a "free-market" system of caveat emptor backed up by tort laws. There are certain things that money can't really make up for: the death of your pet. The death of your daughter from adulterated medicine that was given to you in all trust by a doctor.

One reason that Libertarianism will never catch on in the US is that to most Americans, these are NOT "acceptable risks."

|5.18.07 @ 4:31PM|#

grumpy delusionalist,
Oh please. You think some other system would be better? You think if you just give enough power to the right people, no one will ever do anything evil ever again? Yes terrible things happen even in a free market. What makes the market far superior is what happens after the terrible thing. The market reacts far swifter and more effectively than any centralized department of state ever could. That was, I think, Ron's point.

If you truly think the possibility of poisoning your pet is an "unacceptable risk", your ONLY option is not to have a pet.

|5.18.07 @ 4:34PM|#

Warren: What you said. But do need state to punish those who defraud people.

|5.18.07 @ 5:08PM|#

Ron,
Absolutely. There's nothing more libertarian than property rights. Well, maybe free speech rights, or gun rights, or whatever other rights you might prize more. The point is, no matter where and how you prioritize property and the free exchange of goods and services, they are a priority to all good libertarians.

Fraud is a form of theft and therefore a violation property. Punishing people that violate your rights (through due process of law) is the just and proper function of the state.

|5.18.07 @ 5:43PM|#

I have to admit, knowing immediately that I, my family, and my pets had nothing to worry about, because we eat a diet that Ron Bailey denounces as useless voodoo every couple of weeks, was a good feeling.

|5.18.07 @ 5:44PM|#

Hi, Warren.

I replied to you on the Immigration Bill thread.

Hope you're having a good week.

joe

|5.18.07 @ 5:47PM|#

joe, it's nice to hear that you don't feed your family dog food.

|5.18.07 @ 5:51PM|#

...or factory-farmed meat, or any of the other food products that people who have been following the story realize are involved.

|5.18.07 @ 6:14PM|#

That's the problem with assuming a "free-market" system of caveat emptor backed up by tort laws. There are certain things that money can't really make up for: the death of your pet. The death of your daughter from adulterated medicine that was given to you in all trust by a doctor.

I'm glad things like that never happen in our regulated society.

|5.18.07 @ 6:22PM|#

I'm glad things like that never happen in our regulated society.

Yep--good to know that government regulation really stops this from happening...

;-)

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 7:11PM|#

I know it isn't food, but one of my clients is embroiled in a huge lawsuit because the builder of her multi-million dollar residence built it over an existing water way. The tiny stream was channeled under the house through a concrete pipe except it leaks right up into the kitchen floor.

Guess what? The whole thing passed rigorous inspection by the City of Newport Beach, against whom, there is NO recourse.

Thanks the lord for highly regulated building departments that stop this sort of thing from happening.

|5.18.07 @ 7:14PM|#

Warren and Joe are right on. Since eugenics has been discredited, we must applaud the Chinese in helping us achieve our social darwinistic goals via the rubric of unbridled global trade.

I mean, who in their right mind would buy ingestibles from people who harvest organs from partial birth girls who violate the one-child happy lucky family values policy.

|5.18.07 @ 7:25PM|#

Did I just get accused of racism for writing that I don't buy meat from factory farms?

Help me out here; what is that supposed to mean?

|5.18.07 @ 7:27PM|#

"I mean, who in their right mind would buy ingestibles from people who harvest organs from partial birth girls who violate the one-child happy lucky family values policy."

Do you have a pamphlet I can take?

Or a mimegraph of a page written you wrote out by hand, without margins?

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 7:44PM|#

Hot Tip: Don't buy sausage from the Chinese.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 7:46PM|#

As an historical note, in 1937, diethylene glycol was mixed with the nasty-tasting antibiotic sulfanilamide in an elixir sold by the Massengill Company in the United States.

Gives new meaning to the term Douchebag.

|5.18.07 @ 9:47PM|#

The idea that we need government regulation, a functioning tort system AND "caveat emptor" to make us "safe" is complete nonsense. If everyone is taking care of their own business -- thoroughly inspecting purchased goods BEFORE shoving them down the supply chain -- then both government inspection and government courts are rendered unnecessary. If the suppliers at each stage of production test their inputs, and consumer protection groups test the final product, and consumers refuse to purchase goods that haven't been inspected, then how in the world would unsafe products ever make it market? Caveat emptor is all that we need --- not more government inspectors and definitely not more sleazebag millionaire lawyers and their class action lawsuits.

This whole scene fits the classic definition of a "clusterfuck." There are so many parties that are supposed to be "in charge" that effectively nobody is in charge. Everyone assumes someone else is taking care of their business for them, and usually that someone else is the Gubmint in one of it's many forms. Government actually makes us LESS safe in this regard because it creates a false sense of security about the products that we consume.

This should be a wake up call to all manufacturing businesses that do business internationally and rely on government inspectors to do their quality assurance for them. Consumers don't give a damn whose fault it was. They know who they bought the product from, and they won't be buying it again now that Rover is feeding the tree in the back yard. These companies had better get their act straightened out before Adam Smith's invisible hand bitch slaps their punk asses.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 11:11PM|#

Matt, nice, kind of slight variation on the it is almost impossible to cheat an honest man principle.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 11:22PM|#

Back in the seventies my buddy Jeffie Pooh's job was to clean the cutting room at a meat packing joint. It was all stainless and white tile with big floor drains. He'd put on his rubbers and a rain coat and use a high pressure power washer that shot scalding hot water across the room to hose everything down until it gleamed (there's a new twist to taking a shower in a raincoat). When he was done, you could eat off the floor. That was just what it was supposed to be. Sure, somewhere inside he knew if he screwed up he'd lose his job, but it was more than that. He'd sometimes borrow a box of NY Strips if we were going to the river for the weekend but he'd never, ever, shorcut the cleaning process. No matter how many doobs he'd smoked that day. Good Lord Man, it's just not done.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.18.07 @ 11:28PM|#

Meant to say something about reputation but I ran out of the room sneezing.

Now, back to packing up all those book cases full of books so we can paint.

Ran across a free market collection of essays entitled Thinking about America: The United States in the 1990s . Published around 1988.

You can buy it used at Amazon for one penny.

|5.18.07 @ 11:50PM|#

糖尿病 高血压 高血脂

|5.19.07 @ 12:08AM|#

Joe:

Rascist and elitist all in one: shame is just clinging to latent christian guilt. Do you deny the value when the dumb are winnowed out before they breed. It's just that the invisible hand is a much cleaner way for it to happen.

Is that not the point Matt makes?

If you think non-factory flesh is your key to breeding, go forth.

Quiet_Desperation|5.19.07 @ 12:32AM|#

I think I just like the phrase "impure meats".

Do they inspire impure thoughts?

>>> If everyone is taking care of their own business

I'm sure there's parallel Earths where that happens.

|5.19.07 @ 8:18AM|#

fasdfasd wins the thread.

|5.19.07 @ 8:40AM|#

LOL, Eric.

|5.19.07 @ 1:49PM|#

Matt
"If everyone is taking care of their own business -- thoroughly inspecting purchased goods BEFORE shoving them down the supply chain -- then both government inspection and government courts are rendered unnecessary. If the suppliers at each stage of production test their inputs, and consumer protection groups test the final product, and consumers refuse to purchase goods that haven't been inspected, then how in the world would unsafe products ever make it market?"

That is a lot of if's.

The situation you describe worked so well that at some point in history communities (let's say the US) determined it didn't work and created a government solution to it. As a result the US has the safest food supply in the world.

A well regulated market beats an unregulated market any day. That's why regulated markets emerge from free markets...they work better.

Marc|5.19.07 @ 4:43PM|#

I have to admit, knowing immediately that I, my family, and my pets had nothing to worry about, because we eat a diet that Ron Bailey denounces as useless voodoo every couple of weeks, was a good feeling.

Yeah, either that, or you're lucky you haven't been killed off by your voodoo diet (whatever that is) for some other random reason. Don't feel too smug.

Reminds me of a girl I knew who felt pretty superior about being a vegetarian, because it turned out to keep her safe from BSE/CJD. Of course, the people who were dying from E. coli-flavored salads around that time didn't register in her brain in quite the same way.

grumpy realist|5.19.07 @ 7:07PM|#

What I'm saying is that if "letting things up to the free market" produces what the average consumer considers to be unacceptable risks, there's going to be a heck of a lot of screaming for regulation. The average American is NOT going to allow the death of his daughter to be shrugged off as "oh well, just a risk of the market, your fault, you didn't inspect every part of the supply chain, your responsibility." The question is not whether people die under a regulated system, but whether fewer of them die under a regulated system than a laissez-faire system. When people bought from other people in the community there was a very obvious link between where you got something from and if-it-went-bad-you-got-a-crowd-together-and-went-looking-for-a-tree-and-some-rope. Now with globalization, how do you create trust between the buyer and the seller, how do you put teeth into any punishment when that trust is abused, and what's the responsibility along the rest of the supply and shipping chain?

If the products put out by the "free markets" are so great, how come we got the FDA in the first place?

No wonder no one votes Libertarian.

LarryA|5.19.07 @ 9:55PM|#

Thanks the lord for highly regulated building departments that stop this sort of thing from happening.

Right now in San Antonio a bunch of folks are living in houses that are falling apart. For about five years now they've been trying to sue/shame/get some action from the developer. The San Antonio Housing Authority.

Now, back to packing up all those book cases full of books so we can paint.

No one who can read can pack up books.

|5.19.07 @ 11:32PM|#

That's the problem with assuming a "free-market" system of caveat emptor backed up by tort laws.

The problem is not in the free-market system but in a goverment co-opting people's good sense by offering a "Safety System" that only leads to a false sense of security. People assume not that they could be swindled by a seller (and take the necessary precautions, like looking in consumers' journals or blogs, reading reports and critical comparisons), but that Daddy-Government will take care of them.

|5.19.07 @ 11:36PM|#

What I'm saying is that if "letting things up to the free market" produces what the average consumer considers to be unacceptable risks

That is an absurd notion - how do you define what an unacceptable risk means, before assuming what the average consumer might think?

Besides, people are perfectly aware of risks, otherwise there would not be an insurance industry.

there's going to be a heck of a lot of screaming for regulation

Maybe, from some that would like to pass their costs to everyone else - their costs of taking precautions.


The average American is NOT going to allow the death of his daughter to be shrugged off as "oh well, just a risk of the market, your fault, you didn't inspect every part of the supply chain, your responsibility."

Maybe not, but that is irrelevant - the death of a single individual, or even a group of individuals, does not justify the limits on the freedom of everybody else, which is what regulations imply.

Sandy|5.20.07 @ 12:20AM|#

joe, I just argue your diet is unsustainable and environmentally destructive due to the excessive land and energy it takes to make it. I don't think it makes you racist.

But then again, my non-organic diet made me safe from the spinach poisoning brought forth from the evil globalization of...domestic produce.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.20.07 @ 12:48AM|#

how come we got the FDA in the first place?

What is the FDA's claim to fame? Lesse, they banned thalidomide after it was never marketed in the US.

While I am fairly certain that regulation has some minimal impact on food safety, it is primarily a function of market forces together with plain old morality as the government does not have the ability to guarantee food safety. There simply aren't enough resources to inspect every food before it comes to market. In essence, the job falls primarily to the private sector anyway.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.20.07 @ 12:54AM|#

No one who can read can pack up books.

LOL. I'm done. Also found a 1st Edition of James Clavelle's A Children's Story that I forgot I had.

Not done painting. Done packing boxes and moving bookcases.

|5.20.07 @ 2:45PM|#

What everyone seems to be missing is that the idea behind standards and regulations is to create instant trust between buyer and seller and allows lesser-known producers to immediately build a reputation in the market. If we had no standards or regulations at all, every purchase would require extremely long-drawn out negotiations on every single aspect. It would also make it extremely difficult for a new producer to "get the word out" and get a critical mass of customers before going under.

And forget about that "oh, you just have to check the safety of the stuff yourself." Excuse me, but I don't have a full-scale laboratory with me and I'm certainly not going to take the effort, cost, time, and trouble to have to investigate the safety of every single thing around me.

Libertarianism suffers from the fallacy that it assumes instant and perfect information about all products on the market being instantly available to all customers, that conflicting information never exists, that there are no time or testing costs in order to obtain valid information, and that there is immediate feedback on quality back into the market and the reputation of the company. None of these are true.

And no matter how much people yell about the "immorality" of regulations, the average American believes differently. (The argument that it is possible to abuse the trust generated by stamping something as "USDA inspected" is not that much of an argument--we don't use the existence of murderers to argue we should rid of laws against murder. )

|5.21.07 @ 9:49AM|#

Sandy,

I don't limit myself to organic veggies, but you've fallen for some sad propaganda.

Organic veggie practices only consume more land and energy if you only look at the fields themselves. If you actually take into account the lifecycles of the herbicides, fertilizers, and the like, nonorganic agriculture is much more energy-intensive, and more land-destructive.

Also, eating nonorganic vegetables doesn't do a thing to protect you from e-coli. Food borne illness outbreaks happen all the time in nonorganic agriculture, while chemical poisoning actually is nonexistent in organic agriculture.

|5.21.07 @ 12:31PM|#

Ron, why would any food company do full disclosure if it didn't have to? And what's to prevent them from simply trans-shipping everything through an intermediate country so it doesn't have to say China on the label. Or, you know, just lying.

|5.21.07 @ 6:56PM|#

He points out tainted spinach came from California and impure meats were shipped from Nebraska.

Of course, this fails to take into account the ever so slight difference between negligently allowing bacteria that can be destroyed by heat into food and deliberately spraying poison onto food in order to make the food appear more attractive on an international market.