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Bootleggers and Baptists: Cornflakes Edition
March 19, 2009 Corporatism

This in today’s news:

The head of Kellogg Co., the world’s largest cereal maker, planned to urge Congress on Thursday to revamp how the government polices his industry. Kellogg lost $70 million in the recent salmonella outbreak, after it had to recall millions of packages of peanut butter crackers and cookies.

Chief executive David Mackay wants food safety placed under a new leader in the Health and Human Services Department. He also called for new requirements that all food companies have written safety plans, annual federal inspections of facilities that make high-risk foods and other reforms.

This time the bootleggers are posing as the Baptists. I am sure Mackay is hoping for a whole host of additional regulations. Why would a major food company WANT to be more heavily regulated? For the same reason that the major tobacco companies are BETTER OFF today than they were before the tobacco settlement. Could it be possible, at all, the larger companies are better able to deal with these regulations that their smaller (and potential) competitors could not? That is what happened in tobacco. The Big Tobacco companies essentially paid a bounty to the government to eliminate any competition from smaller and lower cost manufacturers.

I hope this happens. Because the first thing I will do is to run around to all of my legislators and make sure that these new stricter standards will be applied to ALL food companies … and that includes my local organic farm, all of the places that come to my farmers’ market, etc. Let’s see how long those guys last.

Can’t say I blame Mackay, he knows full well that we are living in the corporatist world order.

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