Old saying “Fire and flight regulations are written in blood.” Food regulations are likely written in various excretions?
Excretions with blood?
They’re the best excretions…
Puss is an option too
There have absolutely been deaths due to unsafe, mass produced foods.
Insane! 178 others were left with permanent injury including kidney and brain damage!
And this was entirely preventable
However, the Jack in the Box fast-food restaurant chain had knowledge of but disregarded Washington state laws which required burgers to be cooked to 155 °F (68 °C), the temperature necessary to completely kill E. coli. Instead, it adhered to the federal standard of 140 °F (60 °C). If Jack in the Box followed the state cooking standard, the outbreak would have been prevented, according to court documents and experts from the Washington State Health Department.
California and Washington States ahead of the game again, especially in 2025+
Most US foods produced under their ‘regulations’ are forbidden in EU.
And for good reason.What is so incredible is that we are living st a time with such massive food surplus that it would blow the mind of anyone living in the past… but they will let all of it go to waste and just add bullshit to the food just because they can…
And make it unaffordable, because fuck it why not
And pure unadulterated something-else-ism would not, lol. The concept of responsibility that hard to grasp?
The concept of responsibility that hard to grasp?
For companies that seems to be case yeah
Right. And how does capitalism have anything to do with it?
Edit: companies do not exist. Humans do
And how does capitalism have anything to do with it?
Oh that’s a rhetorical question right?
Under capitalism companies have one and only one responsibility: making the most profit from the capital invested in them. This means that the responsibilities of all employees, even/especially those deciding how the company should act, are driven by this directive. A CEO would not be fulfilling their responsibilities to the shareholders if they made decisions that lower their profits without being forced by law to make those decisions.
companies do not exist. Humans do
Companies forwards their directive of maximizing profits to the humans that are employed by these companies.
Bleach, actually. A small amount of bleach added to spoiled milk makes it taste brand new. The government actually suggested this in a few countries for a while.
Plaster in flour was common enough that after the miller, the middle men, and then the baker all added a cut, there were loaves being sold with less than 20% flour in them. The result was mass malnutrition.
Also, and this is a spicy one but backed by basic economics, regulations are a required element to capitalism. The notion that deregulation is pro capitalism is a misinterpretation of the idea that markets are self regulating. A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations. All our current economic woes are the result of straying away from proven economic theory (mostly deregulation) to the right allowing the corruption of the marketplace and emergence of a strong oligarchy.
That second paragraph is a pretty concise explanation on why ancaps and their ideas are stupid.
Saw dust was also added to flour. Various heavy metals would be added to food to enhance their color.
Also added to grated Parmesan.
A free market is one that is free of corruption and unfair business practices. Which cannot exist without regulations and the enforcement of those regulations.
We’ve had numerous laws precisely because companies couldn’t play fair, and made things worse for all involved. The government didn’t pass laws against company towns, scrip, and predatory pricing because they decided to ban things for fun.
is plaster bread low calorie
Technically. The constipation would probably balance out the weight loss though
Shitting bricks.
I will link to the 1858 Bradford sweets poisoning.
Regulations are written in blood
But I’m an alpha man child and I need to make people bleed to prove it!
Don’t worry I’m sure we’ll find some place that lets you feel the bleeding edge of unregulated capitalism in an alpha release.
Hands up if you didn’t already know that. Or intuited it. To me this seems to be something only US-Americans who argue purely ideologically for a “small government” need reminding of. They’re paradoxically often the first in line calling for government intervention when their drinking water is full of poop or something.
Republicans: But we are the ones selling the spoiled milk.
“But what about my rights?? Drinking spoiled milk with chalk probably cures cancer or something, of course They don’t want you doing that! Why do you hate freedom?”
You’re free to add your own chalk.
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To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Okay but how many people died, how many people are suffering long-term effects, and what’s stopping them from adding a different deadly thing to our food?
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean. Also it assumes healthy competition and companies that are competing to make the best product at the chrapest price. It ALSO assumes brand lotalty isn’t a thing, and consumers are judging things purely objectively.
Like, i understand the idea, but in practice there are a ton of caveats.
Market self regulation assumes informed consumers that are smart enough to know what things mean
Not just smart enough, but informed enough. That means every person spending literally hundreds/thousands of hours per week researching every single aspect of every purchase they make. Investigating supply chains, performing chemical analysis on their foods and clothing, etc. It’s not even remotely realistic.
So instead, we outsource and consolidate that research and testing, by paying taxes to a central authority who verifies all manufacturers keep things safe so we don’t have to worry about accidentally buying Cheerios that are laced with lead. AKA: The government and regulations.
Also the evidence shows this isn’t really true, anyway.
Also, if you want inspections to make sure there isn’t bird shit in the milk, then you need regulation. Otherwise people are just drinking bird shit and they don’t know.
And also they’re already basically Monopolies. You don’t have real options. Most food products come from like 3 mega corps who own hundreds of brands.
To continue with the argument of “the market will self-regulate and people wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again”
Turns out the parent company owns every other brand of that product, so going to another brand is meaningless
wouldn’t buy that brand anymore so they would never do it again
Assuming there is perfect information in the market. In reality there is heavy information asymmetry.
It also assumes free competition while we have every market dominated by a few players buying up everyone else, often with cartel like behavior.
It also assumes it is immediately deadly poison, and doesn’t do something like cause early dementia 25 years later.
It also assumes the masses behave rationally, which they won’t ever.
We’ll just get the cheapest shit with the limited information we are given, unless it is life-or-death, where we will pay any price out of fear.
This is true, but it’s important to remember that some regulations were not written in blood, but instead in racism - see R1-zoning as one of the most significant examples.
Regulations are just tools, really. They can evidently be used for good, and should be used for good, but some are being used for bad and should be reformed.
Sure, and such regulations should be reformed. We should not just start turning stuff off and seeing who breaks!
I wish that would go without saying, but current events are unfortunately evidence of that not being true.
Surely you could’ve come up with a better example.
Chalk is just calcium carbonate. Modern medicine uses calcium carbonate to as a calcium supplement.
We are still adding things to milk. Any milk that’s “calcium fortified” or “extra calcium”, and a lot of nut-milks, have calcium carbonate as an ingredient to this day.
I mean, I get your point…honestly, I do…but it’s coming across nearly as the same sort of anti-science drivel you’d expect from the counterargument.
Industrial chalk that was used as adulterants wasn’t nearly as pure as the calcium carbonate you are imagining
Plus I can’t imagine that a company who is adulterating their milk with chalk dust is going to stop to find and choose a food-safe chalk dust and supplier. They’d just scoop a bunch from whoever’s cheapest, and if they adulterate their chalk dust with bleach or something, that’ll be going straight into the milk.
we’ve become complacent for so long due to good regulations keeping us safe invisibly, that your average voter seems to think we never needed them to begin with.
The ignorance is staggering and dangerous
In your examples you know those things are being added to the milk because it’s in the ingredients, the case OP mentioned you didn’t know. Are you able to see the difference?
And there were many other things added to food besides chalk
Exactly. There are better examples. Chalk is a bad one because it is, technically, edible, and still being used as an additive to this day.
Chalk in OP’s example was being added without people’s knowledge, it doesn’t matter how inoffensive it is. How hard is it to grasp?
Because people are dumb. Chalk is in milk, now, right on the label…even marketed as a feature. I’ve got two bottles of alt-milk in my fridge now, store-brand Almondmilk and Planet Oat. Both list chalk as the second ingredient.
But if you tell that to any random schmuck they either won’t believe you or they’ll be disgusted. And then probably keep drinking it anyway.
And that’s with the information right there on the label.
I’m not trying to downplay the example, but there were far worse atrocities fixed by regulations.
It’s not the chalk that’s the problem.
It’s using it to disguise the fact that the milk you’re selling is spoiled.
In big cities like New York, some dairies fed cows leftover grain mush from distilleries, called swill. The cows were sick, the milk was watery and bluish, and to make it look normal, some sellers added stuff like chalk, flour, even plaster. It wasn’t about hiding spoiled milk like you suggest - it was about making terrible milk from unhealthy cows seem drinkable.
Bro. Jesus fucking christ.
It wasn’t about hiding spoiled milk like you suggest - it was about making terrible milk from unhealthy cows seem drinkable.
That’s literally the same thing. Did you just learn what a thesaurus is?
Except it’s not the same thing. Spoiled refers to milk that has gone bad due to age or improper storage. That’s not what the swill milk scandal was about. It was milk that was bad to begin with - not spoiled, just poor quality because it came from sick animals.
Yeah. I get that…but the way it was phrased by OOP it was as of “chalk” was used by an example as if that makes it somehow worse. We still put “chalk” in milk, though.
Better example is like those people who say “eww” to hotdogs because there’s a regulation limiting how many bug parts are allowed in them…not even considering the alternative of “no limit on how many bug parts”.
Or my wife, who refuses to eat a cherry tomato if it fell on the ground.
