Guest Opinion: Cut government link to the food chain
by Paul Schwennesen on Jun. 25, 2008, under Opinion
As a producer with a raft of bureaucratic "protections" between you and the consumer, there is little or no incentive to create a purer product than your competition because a government agency has "volunteered" to take the heat for you, should anything go awry.
A column by Mark Kimble (“A regulatory beef” on Jan. 10) highlighted a growing dispute between the Pima County Health Department and farmers’ markets.
He suggested government was merely a “step behind” in regulating farmers markets, and that the two sides were just a handshake away from an equitable arrangement to save Tucson’s hapless residents from unregulated food.
Well, the tables have turned. Gov. Janet Napolitano has now signed into law an amendment to an exemption that allows food producers to sell their products without the interference and onerous licensing fees the Health Department has been demanding.
The new law reads, in part:
“The producers of food products on agricultural lands . . . shall never under any pretext be denied or restricted the right to sell and dispose of their products . . . No tax, license or fee shall be imposed, levied upon, demanded or collected from a producer for a sale of a food product.”
This law, which clarifies the definition of “food” (to now include you’ll be glad to know, beef and lamb) is a tremendous boon to the small-scale agricultural producer as well as the tens of thousands of consumers looking for alternatives to the industrial food chain.
While Kimble could not have known that the county’s regulatory role would be so significantly reduced, his comments nevertheless betray a misplaced faith in the role of government protection on our dinner plate.
A large , obtrusive bureaucracy in the food supply presents two distinct problems:
It tends to reduce food quality by eliminating personal accountability from producer and consumer.
And it becomes a significant, often insurmountable barrier to entry by new producers, stifling healthy competition and economic liberty.
What’s wrong with having the government safeguard our food supply? It sounds eminently reasonable to have a trained, unbiased authority keeping unscrupulous producers from poisoning their clientele.
The problem is, it doesn’t work. Unscrupulous or negligent producers poison us all the time!
How many millions of pounds of ground beef have been recalled this year? Who plans to eat raw tomatoes anytime soon?
The standard governmental reply is, “Imagine how much worse it would be without government safeguards!”
This misses the point. As a producer with a raft of bureaucratic “protections” between you and the consumer, there is little or no incentive to create a purer product than your competition because a government agency has “volunteered” to take the heat for you, should anything go awry.
In effect, the incentive among producers is to win the race toward the bottom rung, where they can most cheaply and easily meet the minimum standard.
If a producer’s personal reputation and livelihood were at stake every time a consumer purchased his product, his incentives would be properly placed, and he would continually strive for better and better quality, knowing the competition was doing the same.
Moreover, government intervention in the food industry stifles new entrants with an immense amount of regulation, licensing and fees.
This reduces competition and favors larger and larger industrial nodes of production.
In turn, these larger production centers grow farther and farther from their clientele, exacerbating the anonymity that makes cutting corners an acceptable practice.
Finally, customers become the unwitting accomplices in a centralized food system.
We have come to expect food choice to be a price-based activity alone. We place undue reliance on labels and certification; we have forgotten how to seek (and thereby encourage) superior quality in our food.
We are what we eat, the saying goes. If what we eat is an overregulated, dislocated shadow of what food once was, what does that make us?
Arizona should be commended for empowering, if even in a small way, the vital relationship between producers and consumers, and of limiting central authority in our food choices.
Government isn’t just a “step behind.” It shouldn’t even be in the race.
Paul and Sarah Schwennesen own the Double Check Ranch near Winkelman.
