When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quipped “we won’t know what’s in the bill until after we pass the bill,” she laid bare the full truth of tyranny by administrative law. She made this remark prior to the enactment of what is now known as “Obamacare.” Yet, it applies to virtually all major federal legislation enacted into law.
Consider, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration released a draft regulation that would require backup cameras on all new vehicles in 2014 to prevent drivers from backing into pedestrians. The rule would cost as much as $2.7 billion a year and add as much as about $200 to the cost of a new car. The final rule is due out in February.
The agency said on average, 292 people are killed each year by drivers when backing up. Another roughly 3000 are seriously injured in back-over accidents. In round numbers, the cost of preventing those deaths and serious injuries is $1 million each.
Now, I am a careful driver and I do not want to spend extra $80 to $200 for a back-up camera when I buy my next car, but I won’t have that option. I will have to spend that money because of the mishaps of 3000 careless drivers each year.
Earlier this year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published its Repair, Renovation, and Paint rule. It specifies the work procedures carpenters and painters have to follow when working on homes built before 1978. It’s onerous and very costly to homeowners contracting major home maintenance projects. The rule is intended to protect children under the age of six from lead poisoning by insuring they will not be exposed to lead contaminated dust and paint chips when painted surfaces are disturbed in the course of the work.
Adults and children over the age of six are not risk. In fact the draft rule had an opt-out provision if there no children under the age of six in the home. That opt-out was stricken from the final rule.
We are micro managed by vast federal regulatory agencies with extraordinary and often arbitrary authority over our lives. That we won’t know what’s in the law until we pass the law is chillingly correct. We are subject to virtual strip searches and or groping in our airports. We wonder where did that come from.
So what does this have to do with the soup? Everything.
S.510, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act passed in the Senate this past November and could be signed into law before the end of the year if the House moves on it. If it is not passed in this congressional session, it will likely resurface in the next. It essentially gives the FDA absolute control over food production, processing and distribution.
I wonder if in five or ten years we will find ourselves sneaking off to food “speakeasies” to feast on oysters on the half shell, beef tartar, cheeses made from raw milk and deliciously medium rare New York strip steaks. For sure, my dreams of an artisan baked bean boutique seem dashed – no artisan pork and beans, no cassoulet with lamb, no heritage chili beans, and no Mediterranean beans with fennel and lamb, all smartly packed in quart jars and all smartly priced. All gone.
The “from the farm” links on this page are web pages of small food producers and processors in Wisconsin that I patronize. This list is by no means comprehensive, most are too small to bother with a web presence. This small list links does however shine light on Wisconsin’s unique food culture. It is that regional culture that is most threatened by placing absolute regulatory authority for food production and processing in one massive bureaucracy. Bureaucracies manage that which is large and uniform and set impossibly high hurdles for all the rest.
What would the FDA make of Ma Baench, a small Milwaukee company that packs raw marinated herring tidbits to be served upon crackers. I cannot see the FDA ever approving of raw fish or meat to sold as a ready to eat finished food product. I can see them banning it.
Or how about Hook’s Cheese, a creamery that produces a magnificent 15 year cave aged cheddar? I mean how is some bureaucratic stuffed suit obsessed with food safety going to take to perishable food served up after a fifteen year stint in a cave.
Karl’s County Market is small supermarket with a large butcher shop. It sells restaurant quality meets and produces absolutely wonderful sausages, some of the best in Wisconsin. That says a lot. Wisconsin is home to many fine sausage makers, large and small. Here’s the rub. In 2007, USA Today reported, cured and smoked meats and meat products are strongly associated with some types of cancer. No amount is safe according to the American Cancer Research Institute. They also caution eating more than 18 oz. of cooked red meat a week.
That “no amount is safe” assessment will surely draw attention of agency has complete authority over our foods and is mandated to insure food safety. Are the days of Wisconsin’s beloved bratwurst limited? That seems to be low hanging regulatory fruit.
This brings us to John and Dorothy Priske. They raise grass feed, corn finished, Highland beef on their Fountain Prairie farm. The beef is aged for six weeks after its slaughtered. Years ago this was standard practice. Ageing improves both flavor and tenderness of the beef. It’s also costly from a producers point of view. Is that a practice the FDA will view kindly?
Lastly, I give you the Kickapoo Orchard. Over forty varieties of apples are grown there. The harvest begins in mid-August and goes on until the end of October. All of the apples are sold directly to the public from orchard’s large store. The orchard in a way is both a large producer and a small producer at the same time. Is this producer/retailer going to be caught in the crossfire of crippling and unnecessary regulation?
I don’t know the answer to these questions. I do know industrial agriculture, Congress and the regulatory agencies too often intertwine in that unholy thing we call corporate cronyism. It systematically robs us of our dollars, our choices and our opportunities. My baked bean boutique seems out. The backing-up camera for my car seems in.
