Bad Eggs, an Egg-cellent Opportunity to Reform Regulatory Process

Half a billion eggs recalled resulting from the salmonella outbreak traced back to two Iowa egg farms; or lets be accurate egg-corporations. Now that’s a colossal Humpty-dumpty event.

And what helped bring about this potential epidemic of disease-ridden eggs, two huge home-grown entities. First and primary are the egg-producers, mega-farm companies that operates expansive egg mills with the sole purpose producing the most eggs at the lowest cost to generate the largest profits. Almost the very definition of the capitalistic enterprise model we all learn about in school; and egg-actly what we expect in America. What then went wrong with this successful approach to market-place production?

The failure that took place here is the same one that has taken place throughout the our nation and throughout the world whenever an enterprise owner(s) put their profit motive before any and all other considerations. In this case, the egg factories viewed that making their profit was more essential than the health and safety of the American consumer. Did they do it consciously and deliberately with full intention to spread a serious and potentially deadly disease across the country? No, they did not intend to purposely infect their product. However, they did overtly make decisions and impose operational procedures and conditions that promote the potential for such consequences.

How can we know this, that they knew they were taking risks with the public health? Well if you are issued environmental law violations and food safety violations, then you cannot claim that you were unaware of the potential risk your product represents. If you define operating procedures that increase the opportunity for conditions that either inadequately treat the containment of such disease outbreaks or that fail to monitor and detect the occurrence of the disease in your production facilities then you made overt decisions for which you are responsible. If you fail to take corrective actions in response to citations of operating procedures or environmental conditions then you are making a definitive decision to allow the risk and even to promote the risk.

Besides being held accountable for their on-going violations, these egg-producers are subject to and vulnerable to the lawsuits that harmed and endangered citizens could make against them. We will have to wait and see if and how this path may play out. But it will probably not be a swift journey, and there may well be some legal protection that has been enacted by the wise and informed leadership of our political legislative bodies.

But there is another set of players in this debacle, there is the governmental agency or agencies and their legislative creators that have failed to provide an adequate authority to perform the explicit function of protecting the public’s food supply. In the case of the legislatures, they have not endowed the agencies with an effective means and authority to penalize violators. In the case of the agencies, they have failed to employ the power that they do have to the best of their ability, and they have failed to adequately present information to their controllers (U.S. Congress or state equivalents) to the effect of the threats represented by the current circumstances in the system.

What will we see as a result of this egg-asperating situation? The House and Senate committees will hold hearing and may even propose some regulatory reforms that they will tout as the ultimate solution that will insure the safety of the American food supply. They may even find a way to pass the regulation despite the partisan bickering and obstructionism. Of course if they do find a way to pass the legislation, it will be weakened by caveats and constraints carefully crafted into the clauses and context to which the code will apply. Not to mention the attachment of ear-marks and amendments that will be unrelated to and either unsupportive of or detrimental to the egg-plicit purpose of the bill.

What won’t happen is Congress will not recognize nor seize the opportunity to actually create a efficient and effective approach to changing the nature of the regulatory approach to bring about a safe food supply for America. They will not see the way to reduce the cost of government bureaucracy to achieve these goals and at the same time incent the private corporations engaged in food production to compete for safety in their products not as a regulatory budget but as a profit seeking motivation under their own control.

In the end, the America people will be left with an unhatched opportunity for improving the safety of their food, and with the rotten egg of ‘business as usual’ government.