This is one reason why I just give stuff away, besides that fact that we grow more than we'll ever eat. We're putting up tomato sauce now, and I've been chopping the zucchini into cubes and freezing them, as well as the peppers. Damn furrils got my sunflowers though, so I'm going to plant some more.

Re the issue at hand, if the government MUST be involved in every little mom-and-pop farm and roadside stand going, how pathetic is that, anyway? Seriously, we have farmers' markets here on Saturdays and Sundays, where just about anyone can sell their wares, but I'm going to look into it to see what's really involved, if the vendors have to pay a fee or what all else is involved. I'll get back to yas.

"Why should government be involved at all in people voluntarily selling goods to other people who are eager to buy them?"

I have no idea why you keep asking this, either tacitly or overtly.

You have escaped food poisoning entirely due to the efforts of inspectors enforcing cleanliness rules on the food industry.
This may be news to you: you don't avoid poisoning the public by waiting for an infraction that injures or kills people - you have to be proactive, to prevent the conditions that produce an outbreak.

Just who would have disposed of millions of pounds of contaminated beef in the last couple of years, voluntarily? Just who would have effective, standardized testing and food production, storage and transportation methods without a unifying force?

Yes, I mean force. Surprise: some people won't have your continued good health in mind. This is apart from those who simply have no way to tell if their product is poisonous after all.

Yes, there is a point at which Feds need to recognize their low ROI. I suggest that local farms do not have a problem selling to local people, where the direct seller/buyer connection exists.

But you're not about to make me believe that you accept that the frozen hotdogs you're fond of can come from Calcutta without your knowledge.

Radwaste,
Are you seriously equating buying fresh produce on the farm on which it was grown with the industrial food chain that produces frozen hotdogs?

There must be a media blackout preventing me from hearing about the widespread cases of food poisoning resulting from the inspection-free produce I see being purchased off the back of trucks on the side of the road every weekend around where I live!

This is a farm stand for pete's sake!

It is an American tradition for farmers to sell whatever produce they grow at their roadside stands.

I'd also be willing to bet that the produce bought at the local farm stand is safer than the produce bought at the supermarket.

I am surprised at Radwaste having this opinion.

When I dated, I went with a girl for three years who was one of these health inspectors. I got to meet and know all the health inspectors in the county I lived in. I do not recall ever a hot dog geting people sick. More often it was poor prep of salads or people not washing their hands after going to the bathroom and then preparing customers food. I remember a salmonella scare where the then gf helped try to track where it came from.

The inspectors all talked shit about how everyone else inspected. Most everyone thought they were the best inspector. I heard every single one talk shit about whoever wasn't around. How someone let whatever slide and how someone else had no people skills and how another was too much of a hard ass. All this to say that, they could give you any score they wanted. If they didn't like you, they would find things wrong. If they did like you, things weren't noticed. It was always funny (to me) when they changed neighborhood turfs because thats when a seasoned inspector in a new part of town got to inspect what the previous inspector gave a great score. New score is not so great, published in the newspaper. Same kitchen as before, same prep, diff score. Owner of the joint pissed and pleading for mercy, trying to get the inspector on the phone to explain the new low score. Inspector says the old inspector was doing a bad job, and the owner needs to upgrade this, this, this, etc. All seemed more than fond of the latest neat (expensive)kitchen gizmos.

There also seemed to be pressure from the inspector's boss to find more health violations, because,whadayaknow, the county had a budget crunch due the general fund being depleted because of some out of control prosecutors malfeasance. So, nifty little incentive to find things wrong in the restaurants, because the fines go to paying the inspectors. Health didnt always enter into it. The standards they were supposed to try and hit were different than the other counties. I got to meet a few guys who worked for the Feds doing this stuff too. Also different standards.

I think that the market of food at large does not need health inspectors. I don't think it is a proper role of government. I think word of mouth/reputation for businesses solves this problem just fine. I grant anyone that all my evidence is anecdotal. I welcome anyone who differs to bring stats that blows my prejudices out of the water.

Whoops. I forgot a word in the first sentence of my final paragraph. I don't think government health inspectors are needed. I think private one can do a better job (because the incentives align) and don't cost taxpayers anything.

"Why should government be involved at all in people voluntarily selling goods to other people who are eager to buy them?"

Possibly because government bureaucrats do what they are told by their elected superiors, who have more interest in big agribusiness's that fund their campaigns, than they do small scale local producers, who just might be seen as a threat to the aforementioned agribusinesses.

Or maybe when you are paid to regulate, and aren't given appropriate restrictions to such regulation, you see *every* business as needing regulation. Small scale producers do not need the tight (and appropriate) regulation that the massive food production factories do. If I buy my neighbor's eggs, and get sick, it doesn't take an investigation to figure out what happened. If I buy eggs from one of those factories with the biological components that spit out eggs, and something goes wrong, a whole lot more folks get sick, and tracking down the problem does get pretty complicated.

*That's* when the regulation of such operations becomes important. Not when a small farm throws a birthday party for a dozen or so kids.

Radwaste:
"You have escaped food poisoning entirely due to the efforts of inspectors enforcing cleanliness rules on the food industry."

Ms Alkon's reply:
"No. It's bad business to poison people."

I'm not sure I'd want to hang my hat on the profit motive driving public health decisions.

Sure - it's never a good idea to poison your clientele, but an awful lot of money can be made awfully fast by large international businesses that only see another set of easily poisoned people lining up to buy food that the propaganda arm of said company has convinced them is safe.

Long term? Bad plan.

Short term? Big profits. A lot of sick and possibly dead folks would suggest that regulation might be needed to discourage firms from only looking at such sick and dead people as a quantifiable cost of doing business.

Railmeat, what do you think about the E.coli outbreak in the Pacific NW mid 90's by Jack In The Box?

I think the profit motive and getting their pants sued off of them fixed the problem pretty well. Now they burn the shit out of their burgers.

You have escaped food poisoning entirely due to the efforts of inspectors enforcing cleanliness rules on the food industry. -- Radwaste at August 8, 2012 6:21 PM

Sorry to jump on the bandwagon, but what happened prior to 1938 when the FDA was created?

When I was growing up -- we trusted the "Reg. Penna. Dept. of Agr." label a hell of a lot more than anything the the Fed put out.

Also note that the inspection of a local restaurant is regulated by the local health inspector, not a national agency.

About the only time the fed is involved is when food poisoning breaks out among many states and they can track it to the same restaurant chain.

As with so many laws and regulations, the government has lost sight of the goal. Some degree of regulation is likely necessary, but one needs to ask: "what are we trying to achieve?"

Realistically, you will never eliminate individual cases of food poisoning. You can inspect restaurants all day, but if they accidentally leave a jar of mayonnaise sitting out too long, someone is going to get sick. Life is like that. If this happens more than a couple of times, it will hit the local newspaper, and the restaurant will be out of business. No need for government intervention.

The same for a farm stand: If a farm sells lousy food, it won't have any customers. Again, no need for government intervention at all.

The role the government may have is at the level of big agribusiness and wholesalers. If one of these screws up in a spectacular fashion, it could affect tens of thousands of people. Without a direct link to the consumer, this is also the level where a desire for short-term profits may outweigh any sense of responsibility for the consumer.

In other words: There is no need for *any* government involvement at the retail level: shops, restaurants, farm stands, and the like. No licensing, no inspections, nothing. At the producer and wholesaler level, there *may* be a role for government regulation.

Rad, I have to disagree with you. I've had food poisoning three different times from three different restaurants. I've never gotten food poisoning buying produce from a roadside produce stand or from eating food at a someone's house. And let's not forget all the salmonella and e-coli outbreaks in the commercial food industry in the last few years. Spinach, lettuce, ground turkey, ground beef, eggs, peanut butter, cantaloupe...btw...ConAgra seems to have the most contaminated items.

"Short term? Big profits. A lot of sick and possibly dead folks would suggest that regulation might be needed to discourage firms from only looking at such sick and dead people as a quantifiable cost of doing business."

But there's a big negative feedback loop on this in the form of liability. Their insurers would never stand for a food products company knowingly pursuing this type of policy. Do you know who regulates the safety of electrical appliances (in the U.S.)? It isn't the government. It's Underwriters' Labs, and they do a fine job. UL is supported by the insurance companies who insure the manufacturers. So UL doesn't have a motivation to let things slide, because that would hurt the insurers that support them. (Google "Federal Pacific Stab-Lok" if you want to see what happens when the UL process gets circumvented.) But neither does UL have a motivation to over-regulate, because if they do, that puts manufacturers out of business, and then the insurers have no one to insure.

Companies that insure restaurants could set up the same sort of thing: an insurer-supported agency that goes around inspecting restaurants that they insure. A sticker on the door that says "Inspected by the National Restaurant Inspection Company" could be a selling point for restaurants. As Jim P. points out, there was a time when the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture was renoun for its thoroughness in inspecting food producers, and many producers actually paid the state of Pennsylvania to send inspector to inspect their plants in other states, because the notation "Reg. Penna. Dept. of Agriculture" on the package was a mark of quality.

I worked in several restaurants in Tennessee in my teen years. The inspectors I dealt with were pretty by-the-book; the problem was that the book was arbitrary and just plain made no sense. A filthy bathroom counted off a max of five points, but if someone accidentally left a bottle of bleach on a shelf above a shelf that held canned sauce, that was an automatic fail.

I got food posioning 3 times from the same El Pollo Loco over the course of 8 months. I dont go out to eat more than once a week so it was easy enough to figure out which location it was, after the second time I called the heath inspector.

After the third I called a local news channel. New crew fixed the problem faster than the heath inspectors did