Okay, but what government? Federal, state, local? Are you aware there’s a difference, or is it all of a piece to you? Have you ever bothered reading the 10th amendment, or have any basic knowlwdge of the machinery of our constitutional government? The words “general welfare” somehow blind people to the limited nature of federal power. Nit sure why, except that they personally like it when the feds do more things, and as such grab onto whatever’s available to justify themselves.
If you'd read some of my other posts, you'd see that I have a very good understanding of the difference between local, state and federal governments. So stop being sarcastic and claiming that I don't know what the constitution says.
Hiw do you even know what the people are and aren’t able to do for themselves.l? Ugh, nevermind. That would be a pointless digression. What you quote doesn’t say what you say it says, is the main point. Far tron it. All it says is that Congress can levy taxes in so and so ways for so and so ends. Why regulating the national food supply for safety purposes jumps out at you from that is utterly beyond me.
Even though you are clearly being sarcastic here, and allowing your sense of libertarian romanticism to blind you, I will give this a serious answer. I have found that answering the wilfully blind often seems futile (because they refuse to accept any facts that don't fit in their world view), but occasionally lurkers FReepmail to let me know how much they appreciate the information. The nature of your replies suggests that you genuinely do not know the vast amount of work going on behind the scenes to ensure that those oranges, that lettuce, that steak, that can of soup you so casually throw into your shopping basket won't make you sick or kill you.
The fact is that no one has the means, and very few people have the know-how to determine if a particular food is safe to eat. (As an aside, I *do* have the know-how, but I most certainly don't have the high-tech equipment in my kitchen to be able to test foods.) Can you do PCR in your kitchen? Do you have an HPLC or a mass spec machine in your living room? Do you know how to culture and identify bacteria, and do you have a selection of incubators (for growing different kinds of bacteria) in your home? Do you have all of the chemical reagents and equipment necessary to test for adulterants? If your answer is "no", then I have every reason to believe that you do not, in fact, have the ability to determine whether the food you purchase is safe or not.
As an example, botulin (a bacterial toxin) is odorless and tasteless; you have no way to know a can of food is deadly just by looking at it. Unfortunately, a teaspoon of that food is enough to kill you. Another example is E. coli H157:O7, which can be present in meat or produce at quantities sufficient to permanently disable or kill you--but it is invisible. These are just two examples; there are countless ways that food can become bacterially contaminated. That doesn't take into account the multitudes of other ways foods can become unfit to eat, through accident or wilful misconduct. Do you remember the melamine problem in pet foods a few years ago, where hundreds of pets died from food that looked perfectly good?
Another food safety issue is the investigation to determine the cause of outbreaks. Imagine that you land in the hospital because of botulin poisoning--how can you possibly know where you were poisoned? Did you get it from the can of beans you ate last week, or was it something at the restaurant you visited a couple of days ago? There are large enough problems with food safety in the current regulated environment; I shudder to think how difficult it would be to consistently acquire wholesome food if there were no regulations. Both human error and deliberate adulteration would run rampant in a regulation-free environment. I suppose, in your libertarian-colored world, people would just magically know which foods are dangerous and avoid them. But in the real world, that's unlikely to happen.
The FDA already does a decent job of trying to keep our food supply safe, but 3,000 deaths and nearly 50,000,000 illnesses still occur every year. The purpose of the new regulations is to improve the system so as to be even less reactive and more preventative.
“it *is* conservative to believe that the government should fulfilled its constitutionally mandated functions”
Where is the FDA mandated, again? Kindly quote the article and section. Or are you going to go on about the taxing power again?
Well, since you already know the pertinent section of the Constitution, I don't have to quote it again.
I consider any factor that kills more Americans than war (currently 3,000 deaths from tainted food per year, versus less than 7,000 from the entire Iraqi and Afghanistan wars) is absolutely a matter of general welfare.
Hmm, maybe I should dig up the quote about protecting Americans from all enemies, foreign and domestic, too. It sure seems like tainted food could be classified as an enemy...
The libertarian mindset seems to believe that food safety will happen on a voluntary basis, and that willful misconduct can be managed after the fact. The former is a pipe dream but I suppose the latter can work, but only after the fact when many people have died. I've worked in the food industry for 30 years now, and I can say that, for the most part the industry is populated by ethical, moral and conservative people. Even so, I am regularly shocked by what some companies/individuals will do, and how they willingly place others at risk, to increase profits. This applies to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
I also love the argument against a federal approach to food safety. Again, this mindset is for people who don't understand the industry. I'm sure if Jimmah in Georgia is processing peanuts into peanut butter, and the local regulatory agency finds salmonella, because Jimmah isn't following the proper food safety guidelines, that it would be easy to look the other way because, after all, Jimmah is the top employer in the community. So when someone gets sick in Minnesota from his peanut butter, how will the separate agencies ever find the source of the poisoning, or do something to stop it. They won't.
As you point out, it would require a great deal of sophisticated equipment, and the training in how to use it, to ensure your food supply is safe. Yeah, one family producing their own food can probably control things to the point that poisoning is rare. But you gotta love an argument that doesn't see any difference in feeding one family vs. 300+ million people.
What's comical is that these same people will demand manufacturers provide endless information about their products on the label so they can make "informed" decisions. Prior to government regulation, there would be no indication on a label regarding allergens. "Allergic to tree nuts? Sorry about that anaphylaxis, we didn't mean to make breathing so challenging. Too bad you're not carrying an EpiPen."
And let's not get started on pharmaceuticals. How many traveling salesmen were hawking their own elixer just a few generations ago? They killed and injured a lot of people. Sulfanilamide in diethylene glycol, anyone? Yeah, requiring toxicity testing of pharmaceuticals is such an overreach of federal powers. Good grief. But the process worked, the company was punished, but not until more than 100 people had died - mostly children. The company never notified anyone that the product was deadly, only that they should return it. Makes you wish for the good ol' days, huh?
More than 10% of all pharmaceuticals in the world today are counterfeit. Great, we should let everyone buy drugs from whatever source they can find on the internet, because government regulation of drugs is unconstitutional. I'm sure our libertarian friends believe organized crime cares about their product, but if they don't, that market forces will force them out of business. Rolling eyes.
Doctor: "Your symptoms are getting much worse. Why didn't you take the medication I prescribed?"
Patient: "I did. I bought it from some Canadian pharmacy because it was so much cheaper. I've been taking it just like you told me."
Doctor: "The drugs you purchased were nothing but dextrose and coloring. If only you had purchased the drug locally, where the FDA was ensuring efficacy, I might have been able to help you...."
Again, and in my humble opinion, the FDA and the USDA are behemoths of regulation and inefficiency, and have become much more intrusive and influential than they should be. That said, we are much better off today than we were before they were created, and the arguments against their constitutionality are absolutely mind-boggling.