Milk raids? Seriously?

[Jagos]

Link (http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/04/the-rawesome-raid-and-raw-milk-controversy/)

I refuse to believe this is real. People want to spend money on unpasteurized milk the state government of California actually has rules against it? How does this make sense?

California apparently does allow the sale of raw milk but requires a permit to do so. I’m not sure why James Stewart did not have a permit. It’s possible the milk in question didn’t qualify, or that he simply didn’t believe the regulations applied to his store since it is essentially a private “drop-off-point” rather than an actual grocery store. Private individuals pick up privately distributed food from local farmers. If that’s the case, apparently regulators disagreed.

Obviously spending this much time and this many resources to bust people selling dairy products is silly. Making arrests, rather than simply issuing a fine for non-compliance, is silly. And yes, the fundamental issue here is the silliness of requiring permits – or making outright bans – to sell raw milk in the first place. Permits typically don’t make us any safer, and can serve crowd out competition. In this case, big dairy farms are crowding out smaller competitors.

So... Someone decides to go under the radar for milk, it's used to crowd out bigger businesses, and that's somehow not fair... Does anyone else begin to see a pattern with regulation becoming silly?

[TDK]

To my knowledge, the desire for unpasteurized milk is part of the whole holistic-organic-wholefoods bullshit factory. A bunch of misinformed hippies listening to books they bought at the health food store (which, surprise, tell them the only place to get healthy food is at that same store. But that's not suspicious!) and making yet more misinformed assumptions.

So someone ends up figuring that pasteurization is bad. And because unpasteurized milk and honey are available, they must be better for you! Because fuck Louis Pasteur!

(This annoys me because I have to constantly explain to someone I know, why all of these things are bullshit. She once bought a bottle of unhomogenized milk from a local farm, claiming homogenization was bad for you, for instance. :I)

[Jagos]

You do realize that our beers are pasteurized and this is considered a sin in other countries, right?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

.....
Pastuerisation is enforced as a method of disease control so that consumers don't get sick and ill from their milk. You have to get a permit to sell unpastuerised milk to ensure you understand the risks of unpastuerised milk and can inform your consumers.
This is a consumer protection method. It's the same as meat standards. Personally I don't want to have to take everything I buy back to my lab to analyse before I eat it.


Man I wish I could sell lollies with razor blades in them but all these damn regulations get in my way.

[Flarecobra]

Also, the type of milk can affect cheese makers, from what I'm told.

[Aerozord]

While I am not a fan of government regulating what we can and cannot eat, that doesn't go for basic quality standards.

This is something they should be enforcing to keep the stupid consumer from buying tainted milk. Milk already has a short shelf-life. Without pasteurizing it only lasts a few days before you run a risk of contamination

[TDK]

You do realize that our beers are pasteurized and this is considered a sin in other countries, right?

And that is why I brew my own.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

This is something they should be enforcing to keep the stupid consumer from buying tainted milk. Milk already has a short shelf-life. Without pasteurizing it only lasts a few days before you run a risk of contamination

Without pastuerisation you run a risk of contamination straight away. Like taht shit might be full of disease straight off the farm.

[Magus]

We used to drink unpasteurized cow and goat milk all the time on the farm. Buy it, too, from other farmers after we got rid of the cows.

I'd venture this is probably because he sold it to someone else, since you can buy it at farms unpasteurized with no big problem. They labeled his selling as a grocery store, basically.

California farms may be regulated differently from Pennsylvania farms, though.

[Fifthfiend]

Like i'm okay with people selling unpasteurized milk sure but i'm also okay with having to have a license to do it and enforcing the terms of licensing cause someone gotta make sure you're not selling milk that's gonna make peoiple sick as soon as they drink it.

[Jagos]

If it said right on the mild "unpasteurized" you would think someone would say "drink at your own risk".

Just so long as you know. But seriously? A SWAT Team for unpasteurized mild from a bankrupt state? Doesn't California have a budget to balance?

[greed]

Jagos, we also used to have a life expectancy of 35 and rampant parasitic infections. One of the reasons we don't is governments stepping in and saying "don't sell disease ridden filth to consumers and call it food".

So basically I'm with Fifth in that it should be legal to sell it as there some decent reasons to do so, but it should be regulated to ensure the consumer is informed of the risks. The government wastes it's money on a lot of much less important things anyway.

Also the article you yourself linked states that it was a by the book raid and that the "SWAT team" thing was a beat up.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Only if they also wrote "drink at your own risk" on it, smoking style. Cause lots of people don't understand what pasteurisation is and what it does. And heaps of people will be "evil science!"
I will admit if they full on raided the place that seems a bit silly. But the article you posted said it wasn't a swat raid but a by-the-book stye raid whatever that means.

[Jagos]

Guys, hyperbole.

Doesn't excuse the fact that they've arrested three people and dumped $10,000 of milk.

Then, they have people sign waivers for the unpasteurized milk, nuts and honey...

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Also can you explain to me how regulation helps big business? The entire reason governments apply regulations is to rein in big business and stop them from fucking everybody over.

[Jagos]

Smarty, in every situation where there is regulation, you'll have the regulators eventually side with the ones they need to regulate.

Here, the concept of keeping everyone using pasteurized milk helps larger grocers. The small businesses that don't get the license are the ones that get raided. The ones that "play by the rules" get ignored. They get larger market share.

What would probably work better is see if their products are actually harmful, THEN sue them for that harm. I can't name one industry with regulation that has actually done better because of it.

[Aerozord]

Guys, hyperbole.

Doesn't excuse the fact that they've arrested three people and dumped $10,000 of milk.

Then, they have people sign waivers for the unpasteurized milk, nuts and honey...

its easy to understand, just replace pasteurized with "most likely contaminated" (which is often true) and this all makes sense. For example

"Doesn't excuse the fact that they've arrested three people and dumped $10,000 of most likely contaminated milk"

So yes I think dumping milk that, if not tainted would almost certainly be tainted in a few days is justified.

Its like complaining that they threw away meat that was sitting out for a day, yea there is a chance its ok, but smart thing to do is to toss it

What would probably work better is see if their products are actually harmful, THEN sue them for that harm. I can't name one industry with regulation that has actually done better because of it.hard to prove something was tainted after you ate it

I also see a moral issue with your "sue them after its killed you" approach to safety regulations

[Jagos]

Making a company change their behavior through suing works wonders. That, and once an unsafe product gets to the market, most people will usually stay away from the brand hurting more. Hell, they're already taking a risk and signed a waiver. The people have *accepted* that. What more are you asking for in regards to understanding the risks involved with the unpasteurized milk?

[Loyal]

The fact that the risks are wholly unnecessary, utterly preventable, and there's absolutely no reason with any basis in fact for people to be taking them?

[ed] Like, it's one thing for you to be arguing against pointless regulation or big business or whatever, Jag, but please pick your battles. This is not the sort of thing you argue against.

[Aerozord]

Making a company change their behavior through suing works wonders.
Hell, they're already taking a risk and signed a waiver. The people have *accepted* that.

this kind of negates your earlier statement. Its why you cant sue tobbacco companies for giving you cancer. If you slap a warning label on it then they are free of legal liability. This works both ways though, why McDonald's needs to tell you its hot coffee is hot.

Which brings me to why just having a waiver doesn't cut it, people are stupid. The fact they are buying unpasteurized milk is proof of that. There is no reason to do this, it is simply less safe milk, thats it. These people are spending more money to buy a less safe product. Why the hell do you want them to do this? Do you like people getting food poisoning? What is so wrong with government making sure our food isn't tainted?

[Jagos]

this kind of negates your earlier statement. Its why you cant sue tobbacco companies for giving you cancer. If you slap a warning label on it then they are free of legal liability. This works both ways though, why McDonald's needs to tell you its hot coffee is hot.

Even though people know that risk for tobacco, how has regulation and a high tariff (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/burned_by_bootleg_smokes_IqtVTHYSTsWW6KcabOliRO) turned out?

Here's Hot Coffee (http://hotcoffeethemovie.com/). There's a lot of issues with the McD's ruling that I tend to agree with. But that's very different from the imposed regulations on a smaller business for providing milk that people want.

Which brings me to why just having a waiver doesn't cut it, people are stupid. The fact they are buying unpasteurized milk is proof of that. There is no reason to do this, it is simply less safe milk, thats it. These people are spending more money to buy a less safe product. Why the hell do you want them to do this? Do you like people getting food poisoning? What is so wrong with government making sure our food isn't tainted?

So the question that should be asked here is this: How much should people have personal responsibility over the choices in their lives? If they know the risks going in, far be it for me to sit here and tell them they can't have their dangerous milk. The same argument you have here is essentially the drug trade argument. Does it stop people from getting their milk? Change the ones that want it? And that's not even the worst of the pointless regulations that I can bring up. It's just ridiculous that they went to such an extreme over milk.

[TDK]

People should be perfectly able to buy unpasteurized milk, just like tobacco (in that people have the right to make stupid decisions). But both should have warning labels telling you that those things will kill you. (Unpasteurized milk is more dangerous than tobacco by far.) Because not everyone is well-informed enough to know that unpasteurized milk will fucking kill you.

[Archbio]

The same argument you have here is essentially the drug trade argument.

Well, no. When you drink coffee you get caffeine, when you smoke marijuana you get THC, but when you drink raw milk you get bupkis. Except maybe some mystery bacteria! Fun.

If you want to discuss the pointlessness of regulation, you probably should pick some regulation that doesn't have any actual very clear point to it (which the quoted material in the OP fails to mention at all,) rather than one that has a point... just one that you happen to disagree it.

And in a climate where you have an industry based on inventing benefits for unpasteurizing dairy (but prestige and "health" related,) arguing that it's an issue of personal responsability is quite irresponsible.

I mean, maybe we should allow charlatans to sell all kinds of toxic nostrums again. Stupid people will be dead, but at least they'll be responsible for it!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Smarty, in every situation where there is regulation, you'll have the regulators eventually side with the ones they need to regulate.

Here, the concept of keeping everyone using pasteurized milk helps larger grocers. The small businesses that don't get the license are the ones that get raided. The ones that "play by the rules" get ignored. They get larger market share.

What would probably work better is see if their products are actually harmful, THEN sue them for that harm. I can't name one industry with regulation that has actually done better because of it.

If you take away the rules the big business does even better because they are more willing and more able to fuck over consumers, cut corners. This is a ridiculous argument that completely ignores the entire history and point of regulation.
And of course industries will do worse under regulation. That's the POINT of regulation. To stop industries cutting corners andto protect consumers. It's to put the cost of keeping the consumer safe on the industry. It's not supposed to be good for the industry.

Jagos, we know what the world you're advocating looks like. It's not a theoretical dreamland, we went through it in the 19th century when regulation on industry was basically non-existant. Do you know what happened? Everybody who wasn't like a captain of industry got hilariously fucked. Food from the markets were full of disease. Factories were rife with accidents, pollutions and shitty quality merchandise. You were taking a gamble with everything you bought.
Do you really want to return to those days? Like holy fuck.

[Aerozord]

It's just ridiculous that they went to such an extreme over milk.

correction, likely tainted milk

The issue is you are saying a company should be allowed to sell tainted food to people. Anyone that cares about public health should be against this.

There is no reason to not drink pasteurized milk, it is simply healthier, and from what I've been told, tastier too

[Amake]

Gee I wish I lived in the land of the free so I could have the freedom to drink crappy milk if I wanted to. It's all homogenized and pasteurized here, I don't think there's even any regulations enforcing it, it's just that the milk company has to do that in order to get people to want to drink their milk.

Of course that's just because we've all been indoctrinated since childhood by the back of the milk cartons to believe that pasteurized milk is good for you. Clearly someone needs to put a stop to this large-scale brainwashing that's removing people's ability to freely choose to imbibe unhygienic cow excretions since it's ruining our country by making everyone healthier.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Don't you live in Germany? The country where the tap water regulations are better than the bottled water regulations but nobody drinks tap water out of ridiculous stigmas? I'm just saying...

[greed]

Naw she's Swedish. Don't know what their food and water regulations are like.


But yeah Jagos regulation is what works, suing is a terrible means of controlling companies due to the fact that they have more money than the people suing them. We need regulation to prevent snake oil salesmen and other garbage, like the big decline in food inspection from the gutting of the FDA under Bush leading to all those salmonella outbreaks, that's what happens when you let companies police themselves, they get some actuary to tell them how many people they can kill by dropping safety standards and still make a profit. sure it might go overboard sometimes, but I'd rather companies took the brunt of too much regulation than me and my family and friends running a risk anytime we eat something.

[Aerozord]

Don't you live in Germany? The country where the tap water regulations are better than the bottled water regulations but nobody drinks tap water out of ridiculous stigmas? I'm just saying...

This actually describes the US pretty well too.

Most bottled water is just tap Municipal water in a bottle

[Marc v4.0]

Something from the first page that I wanted to mention.

"Raw" Honey creeps me right the fuck out. It looks like a solid milky mass of bees wax, and claims to be unfiltered and etc et bullshit.

I have seen real, raw honey come out of a hive and it looks almost exactly like normal "Not Organic" honey except for some bee and comb bits and it is a little cloudy. Not like a milky-gold mass.


...SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY ACTUALLY SELLING!?



EDIT:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4549162/bullshitinajar.png

WHAT IN THE HELL IS IN THAT JAR

[Archbio]

And really, the argument relating to the "drug trade" that would be analoguous to the argument that raw milk can be regulated (without somehow absurdly robbing people of responsability) would be the same kind of argument that would say that regulations can be put in place to stop stuff like krokodil, (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/krokodil-the-drug-that-eats-junkies-2300787.html) or rather, krokodil as we know it, even if the basic substance was legal.

Edit: It's probably just bee poop.

[Marc v4.0]

As far as I can figure, the mass-production method of harvesting honey is to just melt the whole damn comb and then filter out the wax and bee parts.

Clearly, some granola-damaged PUTZ decided that the filtering part was just too unnatural, man, instead of it being a vital step that should follow melting the whole damn comb down.

Small-time and personal honey production uses a hot wire to slice off the comb caps to drain the honey into a bucket, and it looks like delicious, mostly clear goodness.

The 'Organic' method is not only utter bullshit, but it is completely wrong at the very foundation.

[phil_]

When I want honey, I bust out the football and antihistamines.

[Nikose Tyris]

@Mags: That actually is the best tasting honey. I can't even begin to tell you how good it is, like I will find a way to mail you some. It seems like butter but once you begin spreading it it sticks like crazy, it's really good on toast or toasted bagels. It turns clear when it's warmed enough and gets runny like water.

I'm doing a shitty job selling you on it, but holy shit that stuff is the best stuff.

@Jagos:
The reason the licensing exists in this case is purely public health and ensuring a) That they know how to handle raw milk correctly and check for contamination, and b) to ensure that they aren't selling it as anything BUT Raw Milk.

I'm down with turning it into a yogurt or cheese, sure- but both of those things would pretty much outright kill me, as opposed to pasturized milk-based yogurt/cheese. Incorrect labelling would result in me dead [my allergies list is long]. I don't want to sue from beyond the grave, cause I wouldn't get any money for it!

The updates on the site now seem to make clear that this was a very by-the-book stop of people who were doing underhanded things for, really, no legitimate reason; The cost to obtain a license is $100 for the year [Unless I am misreading the California agriculture website] and willingness to undergo inspections. The only reasonable reason to avoid getting the license and go so underhanded like this [and surely buying milk underhandledly would be more expensive?] would be if they lacked the facilities to qualify for handling the raw milk, or were mislabelling it- meaning its very likely that their product care was lacking and that a number of people were at risk buying their product.

I'm a proponent for clear and constant labelling of things I put inside myself, for food or pleasure. :/

[Magus]

To be fair, our ancestors were eating the whole honeycomb for centuries*.

*They lived to be at least 30. On average.

Seriously, though, I wouldn't expect much botulism from honey. Bacteria don't do well in it. Too much sugar. The same goes for jam, etc.

I'm only talking stuff with ridiculous high amounts of sugar, mind (or salt, vinegar, etc. The kind of stuff people normally use to preserve things).


When I want honey, I bust out the football and antihistamines.

Now we know what really happened to the wild honey bee population.

EDIT: Oh and you don't want to feed honey to newborns. It kills them or something. They call it "YELLOWSTRIPES REVENGE"*.

*Okay, they don't call it that.

[Archbio]

Seriously, though, I wouldn't expect much botulism from honey. Bacteria don't do well in it. Too much sugar. The same goes for jam, etc.

I'm only talking stuff with ridiculous high amounts of sugar, mind (or salt, vinegar, etc. The kind of stuff people normally use to preserve things).

[...]

EDIT: Oh and you don't want to feed honey to newborns. It kills them or something.

Spores! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum#Other)

Honey, corn syrup, and other sweeteners may contain spores but the spores cannot grow in a highly concentrated sugar solution; however, when a sweetener is diluted in the low oxygen, low acid digestive system of an infant, the spores can grow and produce toxin. As soon as infants begin eating solid food, the digestive juices become too acidic for the bacterium to grow.

[Marc v4.0]

It is the botulism that kills newborns when you feed them honey, they can't handle the even trace amounts left over from the pasteurization process.

Which is why not pasteurizing it is stupid as all hell.


Nik, keep it. I can't abide people wasting perfectly good money on buying things like that for my sake. The knowledge alone that they are trying to pass off half-processed honey, that looks like earwax or lard, as better then the fully processed honey, which looks like the honey that comes right out of a comb if you bust it open, fills me with the undying rage of a thousand angry Suns. If I had a jar of it in front of me, I could not be held responsible for all the bodies.

[Voyager]

Also can you explain to me how regulation helps big business? The entire reason governments apply regulations is to rein in big business and stop them from fucking everybody over.

The short answer is regulation create barriers to entry. For example, the calorie labels that all restaurants with more than 50 employees must now have on their menus cost around $500,000 per menu set. For a chain like McDonald's, that's a rounding error in their budget. For a small mom and pop place, that is on the order of opening up a second place, without actually getting the business from it.

As for raw milk, you get what the cows get. If the cows are loaded up with TB, you get TB. If the cows aren't, you don't. The deal with pasteurization is that it is an effective way of cleaning tainted milk. If the milk is not tainted before hand it isn't necessary.

And yes, it does break up the protein structure of milk when you heat it: the whole point of the process is to apply heat until protein structures break down. The deal is most bacteria break down at lower temperatures than most of the milk proteins. This is also why scalding milk changes its properties the way it does.

On the tangent of homogenization, I'm not sure how it got wrapped up in the hygiene debate. All it does is it breaks up the fat globules into much smaller ones. The bacteria involved are to small to be bothered by it at all. It keeps the milk from separating longer, and it makes mozzarella made from it water soluble. That was the freakiest cheese I've ever seen.

On the raid, I really think what creeps people out about it was that it was a guns drawn raid on a grocery store. If this was a group with a history of violent confrontations, I could understand going in ready to shoot someone, but in this context, entering bare arms was a completely unnecessary escalation of force. That sort of thing is how the BATF nearly got itself into a shoot-out with the Houston police.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The short answer is regulation create barriers to entry. For example, the calorie labels that all restaurants with more than 50 employees must now have on their menus cost around $500,000 per menu set. For a chain like McDonald's, that's a rounding error in their budget. For a small mom and pop place, that is on the order of opening up a second place, without actually getting the business from it.
The short answer is that this is a fantasy fairytale world you live in. Barriers to entry are actually created by a lack of regulation. Why? Because regulation enforces minimum standards, it enforces certain costs, it enforces competition. With a certain fixed price of production you enable diversification which enables innvoation. In addition you localise production which helps increase regional variation.
Without regulation cost to produce costs as so small and so tiny that the only thing you are dealing with is economies of scale. The bigger companies have the best economies of scale so they automatically win.
As a small producer you cannot compete with some form of innovation or quality because you are just massively outpriced by the large scale producer.
In additionn without regulations on both place of production and quality of production the cost to setup either factories or distribution lines is slashed because you are not worried about intense worker trainer, spoilage of transported good, high quality equipment or place of production. So the guy with all the money can expand pretty easily.
This is also ignored the fact that alongside regulation we get anti-monopoly laws which are designed exactly to present this.
Without regulation whoever has the most money takes over the marketplace- there is simply no way to compete as .

E: even if this wasn't the case- without regulation business is not about small players and everyone getting along in a happy freemarket, it's about who is willing to fuck the customer hardest and most vigourously, who is willing to murder the most people to make a buck


As for raw milk, you get what the cows get. If the cows are loaded up with TB, you get TB. If the cows aren't, you don't. The deal with pasteurization is that it is an effective way of cleaning tainted milk. If the milk is not tainted before hand it isn't necessary.
How do you know the milk is tainted or not? Are we going to test every batch before we send it out? That would require MORE REGULATION than simply pasteurising every batch.
We don't need to do anything about AIDS, people just need to stop having sex with people who have AIDS.


On the raid, I really think what creeps people out about it was that it was a guns drawn raid on a grocery store. If this was a group with a history of violent confrontations, I could understand going in ready to shoot someone, but in this context, entering bare arms was a completely unnecessary escalation of force. That sort of thing is how the BATF nearly got itself into a shoot-out with the Houston police.

What is your source for this? We've only had one source so far which was in the first page which said it wasn't a big Swat-style raid. That's all we've seen.

[TDK]

For example, the calorie labels that all restaurants with more than 50 employees must now have on their menus cost around $500,000 per menu set.

I call shenanigans.

[Jagos]

I call shenanigans.

There's a reason most places moved to having all calorie info online now. The physical materials for all of the paper can be pretty expensive.

[Aerozord]

point is this doesn't apply to this case. Someone already posted the cost, 100 dollars a year, which is freakin cheap. Thats like the cost of my cars license plates. As for cost of actually regulating it. If you cannot afford to make sure your food isn't tainted, you shouldn't be in business.

I also want to change something I said earlier. These customers won't suffer because they are stupid, but because they are naive and I dont believe in punishing someone for being trusting if I can help it.

Reason is simple, you talk about warnings and waivers, but in practice the American consumer assumes the food and drink they receive are safe for human consumption. While intentionally or not these people are spewing misinformation about it being natural. It is true, but people confuse natural with healthier. Most natural methods aren't used specifically because they are unsafe and/or ineffective

You shouldn't punish the customer for believing what they are told, you should punish the salesman for not giving a crap about his customers health and well being just so he can make some extra cash.

Immoral business practices aren't limited to big corporations, you can get people just as underhanded at your local small business

[BitVyper]

There's a reason most places moved to having all calorie info online now. The physical materials for all of the paper can be pretty expensive.

http://www.louisvilleky.gov/HealthyHometown/healthyeating/HHMenuLabeling.htm

Important part:

"Federal grant funds are available locally to help small businesses (restaurants with fewer than 20 locations) and caterers to become a Healthy Hometown Restaurant and implement menu labeling.
Approximately $500,000...."

Note that this is the only place I could actually find the number 500000 in association with the cost of calorie labels. They don't CHARGE you that much for it, they offer grants up to that amount.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Let's assume you want to print A4 glossy posters of calorie information. I can get those done for 10 c a sheet, a person making large orders could get it far cheaper.
But let's say 10c. $500,000 will get you 5 million sheets. Even assuming every customer took one of these and wrecked it so it couldn't be reused you've served 5 million people. What kind of ridiculous margins are you operating on that the extra 10c per customer is going to wreck you.
Also if you got 50 employees you aren't a mom and pop place, you are a reasonable sized business with a decent turnover.

And if youc an't make a profit without killing your customers you don't deserve to be in business and you should be shut down.

E: Didn't see Bitypers post making my analysis of the $500,000 pointless.

[BitVyper]

I'm pretty sure the majority of the cost is in actually getting the food analyzed, but not only is the government giving you a grant for that (unless you're already extremely successful enough to have twenty restaurants), they're giving you a grant to pay for local chefs (supporting local economies? COMMUNIST!) to help you reformulate your recipes. They are literally giving you money to make your food better.

I can see now how REGULATIONS destroy small businesses.

Edit: The government website seems to suggest that menu labelling is entirely voluntary.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm trained in analytical chemisty. Are you telling me I can earning 100000s analysing food for restaurants? Cause fuck that is totally what I should be doing.

[BitVyper]

Either that or selling menus.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Maybe small business forecloser.

[BitVyper]

Do all three, then grow a Snidely Whiplashi moustache and twirl it as you foreclose on business owners who paid you for menus and food analysis.

[Voyager]

I'm trained in analytical chemisty. Are you telling me I can earning 100000s analysing food for restaurants? Cause fuck that is totally what I should be doing.

Eh. It's been a while since I read the article, so I've probably garbled the number. That said, I've yet to see a government compliance anything take less than a month of work to drive through. Granted, I'm in a different industry, but I've yet to see any bureaucracy that was quick about things.

It's not the analysis itself that costs money, rather it is having a dozen people in meetings for a month convincing the government that the analysis is valid that costs the big bucks. And it doesn't matter whether you have a production unit of one, or one thousand, the meetings still cost the same.

That the real point I'm trying to make: most compliance costs have tremendous economies of scale. One compliance can often be applied to many units, so a business that has many units, be it franchises, or production run can spread the cost out, whereas a business that has few units still pays similar compliance costs, but has to spread that cost over fewer units, be it franchises, or a run of production. As such regulations can be used to produce artificial economies of scale, even in an industry that would otherwise trend towards a more distributed layout.

[Magus]

I'm surprised the food has to be analyzed, it seems like one could simply look at each individual ingredient in a recipe and determine the total calories of a dish, on average.

I also have to second that having 50 people makes you not a mom-and-pop restaurant. That's a pretty big place.

By the way, is menu labeling even federally mandated? I thought it was still mostly a local or state ordinance.

[BitVyper]

As far as I can see, it is entirely voluntary. I have already provided a citation for this. I don't know what Voyager is on about. I'll admit I only looked in a couple of states though, but hey, there's always google.

Near as I can tell, the federal government's main involvement with this is in giving people money to do it.


It's not the analysis itself that costs money, rather it is having a dozen people in meetings for a month convincing the government that the analysis is valid that costs the big bucks. And it doesn't matter whether you have a production unit of one, or one thousand, the meetings still cost the same.

You're suggesting that the process of getting a grant costs an individual restaurant hundreds of thousands of dollars. Start actually providing citations.

Or maybe you're suggesting that the process itself costs that much, in which case I refer you back to the available federal grants.

But no seriously, cite some of this shit. Show me where the federal government is like "you must send twelve people to negotiate with us as much as we want whenever we want. For a month. Muahaha."

[BitVyper]

TWO FUCKING SECONDS ON GOOGLE. (http://www.fda.gov/food/labelingnutrition/ucm217762.htm)

That's the FDA's website. It's not mandatory unless you have twenty locations. If you have less than twenty locations they will potentially give you hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it anyway. And then when you're up to 20, you'll already have the bulk of it out of the way.

And that's only for standard menu items. So before anyone tries to make anymore fraudulent claims about this business, no, it doesn't prevent you from trying new things.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Also compliance costs do not really go down as you increase. You cannot just analyse one restraurant and be like "Oh yeah, all my other restrauaranats are the same". Every single one needs it own compliance certificate. You will save a bit because you know what you're doing and will hae dedicated teams to help with the paperwork and shit but you still going to have to do it for every menu item in every restaurant.

You were also talking about production runs and things- ie a factory- compliance scales up pretty havily as your runsize increases precisely because its easier to cut cornerswhen youa re mass producing so they crack down pretty heavy on bigger producer. As your size increases so do regulation, bigger companies actually do have to fill in more regulation and more often than smaller companies. And if they mechanising and outsourcing and transporting they have to fill in regulations for those as well. The benefits of scale economies in regulation are very small.

I do want to meet the regulator who is like "Oh this one place I've checked out is ok so obviously you're 100 other places are also ok. Let's go get wasted". That dude is dedicated to his work.