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Comment by silexia | Hacker News Reader

As a farmer, what we actually need is de-regulation of food production. The big four meat packers have used government regulations on "safety" to create a monopoly where it costs millions of dollars to process your own meat.

This $5.5m will disappear into the pockets of the cronies of politicians.

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> The big four meat packers have used government regulations on "safety" to create a monopoly where it costs millions of dollars to process your own meat.

Could you go into what regulations you think are wrong? I am by no means an expert on the topic, but I'm under the impression that meat packing regulations exist because the meat packing industry was causing massive harm to workers, consumers, the environment, etc. I mean, high schoolers read The Jungle for a reason.

One thing that has changed in the past few years is that programs to help local farmers get organic certifications has made organic certification much more accessible to local farmers. Could there be similar programs to help smaller meat packers comply with regulation?

I'm not saying you are wrong, but there are a lot more people on Hacker News who are just against all regulation, than there are people who actually know why specific regulations exist and are against them for informed reasons.

I do not trust Big Ag. I’m convinced they’d mix hog shit in with the sausage if they thought they could get away with it - and no, I don’t support allowing the commercial sale of unpasteurized milk, either.

> I don’t support allowing the commercial sale of unpasteurized milk

Why? Some of us would like to make proper cheese ...

Because it kills people.

“ According to a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, there were 202 disease outbreaks in the US due to drinking raw milk between 1998 and 2018, leading to 2,645 illnesses, 228 hospitalizations, and three deaths. In 2017, nearly 5 percent of Americans were thought to consume unpasteurized milk products, including raw cheese, and raw dairy products led to 840 times more illnesses than pasteurized products.”

840x higher risk of food borne illness is significant.

I mean, saying 840x more makes it sound significant, but...

US population in 2017 was 324 million. 5% of that is 16 million people. 2645 out of 16 million is 0.017%.

Does that make it sound significant? Is that even as dangerous as refined sugar?

In my mind that's well within the risk range of "slap a warning label on it and let people make their own decisions".

What's the benefit? It doesn't taste different. It's just a thing that appeals to luddites and granola moms.

Not everything that happens needs to benefit you.

They were asking what the benefit was to you, actually.

There is no benefit to me, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

The benefit already laid out by the grand-parent post... to grant easy access for people to use it to make their own cheese.

We shouldn't just ban everything that has no benefit. People are allowed to make decisions about stuff. If someone wants to drink raw milk, let them.

I don't know of any benefits to raw milk, why don't you ask a luddite or a granola mom? I don't consume raw milk products and I'm not trying to sell you on them.

The benefit to not regulating irrelevant things like raw milk, is that we can put regulatory funds toward things that kill more then 3 people in 20 years--that's your statistic, I pulled it from your post. How many people die of diabetes caused by added sugars each year, I wonder?

To be honest, I don't really care if raw milk remains illegal. My main objection to your post was the manipulation of statistics to make an insignificant issue seem significant.

Labeling should be enough regulation for products like this. Just make sure people can know the difference. This places the onus where it belongs, on the individual.

That's only true if people getting sick isn't using any resources to get un-sick (they probably will be).

Three deaths in 20 years isn’t exactly “using resources”. It doesn’t even make up for the resources used to set up the regulation and enforce it.

As someone else says, we sell it in Europe and we’re fine. We also sell detergent and people know not to put it in their cereal.

Alcohol also kills people. We don't prohibit that.

We do however prohibit stuff like country moonshine. That would be a better comparison.

So? "We have other similar laws" isn't a good reason to regulate something.

that's more about tax revenue than anything else

we should create safer alternatives to alcohol that do the job

Sure I am not going to feed it to babies or drink it my self even. For cheese you want the bacteria alive though in the milk.

You can get a dairy cow or buy a share of one to get raw milk if you really want it that bad

Unpasteurized milk is mainstream in EU, where food safety is a big priority. You can find lots of hard and even soft cheeses made using raw milk in regular supermarkets. It's nothing fringe. The key is to monitor every batch for different bacteria as mandated by law.

Raw cheese producers tend to be better because they have to use fresh milk, whereas pasteurization lets anyone use old not-so-hygienic milk from mixed sources. It's of course potentially a lot unsafer if controls are bypassed, that is something to take into consideration. But if we follow that reasoning, we would end up with long-life UHT milk.

Would anti-trust action against the four big meat packers be helpful? Instead of deregulation?

No. The regulations aren't in place to protect consumers, they're in place to make it prohibitively expensive for anyone to compete. They're lobbied into existence by the market incumbents to stifle competition.

Regulations favor the established.

> Regulations favor the established.

The current regulations favor the established. In a society that is not entirely regulatory captured, where money does not equal political speech as much, regulations could favor independent family farmers.

I am writing this from the middle of EU farm country, and one of the things that regulations/policies do here is prevent multi-national corporations from buying family farms. The argument against this policy is that family farms are economically inefficient. I will take that trade-off every single day.

Livestock welfare regs in the EU did end up favoring corporations in recent years, to some extent. But, at least in my area, family crop farms will be protected by regulations for the foreseeable future.

> The _current_ regulations favor the established.

Which is why de-regulation is the answer in this case. If a regulation is bad, roll it back, don't put another layer of complexity on top. Complexity, again, favors the incumbents. They have more resources to deal with all the nuances.

No, it costs millions to start a butcher business. Antitrust works for oil where one company owns everything, but this is a service business where regulations are the source of the competitive moat. We need de-regulation.

Not sure I want to buy meat from someone who puts scare quotes around safety. That industry needs better regulation, not less regulation.

Not relevant. RFSI is a grant program, and it excludes meat and poultry.

I'm not saying you're wrong on your topic, but this is basically a subsidy program for family farms growing local/regional crops, not some nebulous direct cash infusion.

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