The meat scandal shows all that is rotten about our free marketeers

[Catherina]

Just replace the British words with their appropriate American ones and it's the same damn story.

The meat scandal shows all that is rotten about our free marketeers

This is a crisis not only for environment secretary, Owen Paterson, but for the whole Conservative party

...

Owen Paterson, secretary of state for the environment, food and rural affairs, is living through such a nightmare and is utterly lost. All his once confident beliefs are being shredded. As the horsemeat saga unfolds, it becomes more obvious by the day that those Thatcherite verities – that the market is unalloyed magic, that business must always be unshackled from "wealth-destroying" regulation, that the state must be shrunk, that the EU is a needless collectivist project from which Britain must urgently declare independence – are wrong.

Indeed, to save his career and his party's sinking reputation, he has to reverse his position on every one. The only question is whether he is sufficiently adroit to make the change.

Paterson is one of the Tories who joyfully shared the scorched earth months of the summer of 2010 when war was declared on quangos and the bloated, as they saw it, "Brownian" state. The Food Standards Agency was a natural candidate for dismemberment. Of course an integrated agency inspecting, advising and enforcing food safety and hygiene should be broken up. As an effective regulator, it was disliked by "wealth-generating" supermarkets and food companies. Its 1,700 inspectors were agents of the state terrifying honest-to-God entrepreneurs with unannounced spot checks and enforced "gold-plated" food labelling. Regulation should be "light touch".

...

What the Paterson worldview has never understood is that effective regulation is a source of competitive advantage. If Britain had a tough Food Standards Agency, it would become a gold standard for food quality, labelling and hygiene. British supermarkets and food companies could become known for their quality at home and abroad, rather as "over-regulated" German car companies are, rather than first suspects when something dodgy is going on. Capitalism does not organise itself to deliver best outcomes, whatever rightwing American thinktanks might claim. There has to be careful thought, law and regulation about the obligations that accompany incorporation and ownership, how supply chains are organised and how companies are managed and financed. Otherwise disaster awaits.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/17/horsemeat-scandal-is-tory-party-crisis?intcmp=239

[tblue]

1. "gold standard for food quality, labelling and hygiene"

I am super suspect of certain products made in China. I just don't buy food or chemical products from there, to the best of my ability. Now I gotta watch out for stuff made in UK too? If we boycott their products maybe they'll understand we don't buy just any crap.

[Fridays Child]

2. Oh, but we DO buy just any crap.

Maybe not you but, as a nation, we seem to view "crap" as a major food group.