Although my diary yesterday was the equivalent of the tree that fell in the forest that no one heard, I ended up getting inviting to be interviewed on the Lou Dobbs show tonight to discuss the PCA Peanut Butter Salmonella outbreak, problems with the FDA, and why ideological arguments about food regulation so often miss the mark.
Hopefully I didn't embarrass myself. And here's the diary from yesterday, A Market for Peanuts: The Inevitability of Unsafe Food.
And here's the intro for those who might want to follow the link and read the diary in its entirety.
In the ongoing political (and legal, and historical, and economic) arguments about the regulation of social and economic activity by governments and government agencies, one of the dominant theoretical controversies has been over the answer to this question: Do regulations "interfere" with the market-place by creating unnecessary inefficiencies and higher costs, or are regulations a necessary corrective for the inevitable "failures" of an unregulated (or "free") market? While this controversy remains justifiably open in the context of the markets for many products and services—e.g., transportation and energy, there is no rational justification for an argument in favor of a "free" market for food.