How about this? 1. Actually effective regulation takes money and resources. E.g. it requires hiring scientists and doing tests to measure safety, staff to admi

How about this? 1. Actually effective regulation takes money and resources. E.g. it requires hiring scientists and doing tests to measure safety, staff to administer compliance, etc. 2. There isn't much money or resources going to the regulator. 3. Therefore, de facto there cannot be much real regulatory oversight, since the money to measure and enforce the things you care about isn't there. Like sure, you can wave your hands and say these things were de jure FDA approved or GRAS or whatever, but that could just be what an overburdened and underfunded agency just does by default. We can debate whether ~$1bn is an adequate amount for the FDA to keep us safe from all the bad things it's supposed to, but certainly at some level of funding this argument must be correct. E.g. if your regulator was funded with $1mm / annum there's no way there was any real regulation.