5 ms·

It's kind of astonishing how far people will go in the absence of a punitive regulatory environment. One of my favorite books in Project Gutenberg is this 1820

It's kind of astonishing how far people will go in the absence of a punitive regulatory environment. One of my favorite books in Project Gutenberg is this 1820 treatise on the adulteration of foods: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19031 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19031 Everything from copper to make pickles green, to molten lead to clarify wine.

stevenwoo 9y ago
Don't need to go that far back, only five years for the gutter oil (the most famous of many in the area) phenomena to make the news. https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinas-frightening-unpleasant-cooking-oil-scandal/281000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinas-fri...
jackhack 9y ago
>It's kind of astonishing how far people will go Indeed it is. This is a widespread practice: What comes to my mind is the Chinese milk & baby formula "sweetener" (melamine) incident from 2008 with 300,000 victims. 54,000 babies hospitalized! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal Related: it was also in pet foods. 1 dog and 9 cats died during "taste test trials" and Petco pulled chinese-sourced products due to 1000 pet deaths. https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWithdrawals/ucm129932.htm https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWit... it was also implicated in farm animal feed and fish food. https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWithdrawals/ucm129575.htm https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWit... yet almost ten years later, Petco once again pulled pet treat due to contamination! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/06/pet-stores-are-pulling-chinese-made-dog-treats-after-years-of-mystery-dog-illnesses-and-deaths/?utm_term=.78cf90a30e00 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/06/pet-s... And if they aren't adding poison, the wikipedia article links to a prior incident where 12 babies died from malnutrition, due to watered-down baby formula. Such callous disregard for life (human and animal) is beyond comprehension.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yeah, it sucks. And melamine. It wasn't added as a sweetener. It was added to boost apparent protein content, because it was less expensive than actual protein. As I understand it, the simple test for food protein content reported melamine as protein.
gumby 9y ago
Oh, but surely the market will sort it out, right? Who needs those pesky regulations?
- mirimir 9y ago
  I get the sarcasm :) But in fact, markets are great for many things. However, they're clearly vulnerable to information asymmetry and outright dishonesty, at least in the short term. I mean, demand for PCB-tainted oil for dust suppression did decrease dramatically after PCB content and toxicity were widely known. And demand for melamine-supplemented baby food also decreased dramatically after people discovered the issue. The problem was that more-or-less irreversible damage had already been done. Damages could be recovered through litigation, perhaps. But that doesn't fix poisoned ecosystems and children. So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty.
  - gumby 9y ago
    > So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty. That's not the only source of problem. Another is managing the game theory of externalities. For example, if every transformer manufacturer is dumping its PCBs into rivers, no one manufacturer can afford to make "clean" transformers that dispose of PCB byproducts in a more ecological way as transformer buyers will presumably buy the cheapest one that meets the necessary performance characteristics. Regulation can add management of the ecological externality as a mandatory performance characteristic, disadvantaging no manufacturer relative to all others.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      True. Good point.

stevenwoo 9y ago

Don't need to go that far back, only five years for the gutter oil (the most famous of many in the area) phenomena to make the news. https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinas-frightening-unpleasant-cooking-oil-scandal/281000/ https://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinas-fri...

jackhack 9y ago

>It's kind of astonishing how far people will go Indeed it is. This is a widespread practice: What comes to my mind is the Chinese milk & baby formula "sweetener" (melamine) incident from 2008 with 300,000 victims. 54,000 babies hospitalized! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal Related: it was also in pet foods. 1 dog and 9 cats died during "taste test trials" and Petco pulled chinese-sourced products due to 1000 pet deaths. https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWithdrawals/ucm129932.htm https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWit... it was also implicated in farm animal feed and fish food. https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWithdrawals/ucm129575.htm https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/RecallsWit... yet almost ten years later, Petco once again pulled pet treat due to contamination! https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/06/pet-stores-are-pulling-chinese-made-dog-treats-after-years-of-mystery-dog-illnesses-and-deaths/?utm_term=.78cf90a30e00 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/06/pet-s... And if they aren't adding poison, the wikipedia article links to a prior incident where 12 babies died from malnutrition, due to watered-down baby formula. Such callous disregard for life (human and animal) is beyond comprehension.

mirimir 9y ago
Yeah, it sucks. And melamine. It wasn't added as a sweetener. It was added to boost apparent protein content, because it was less expensive than actual protein. As I understand it, the simple test for food protein content reported melamine as protein.

gumby 9y ago

Oh, but surely the market will sort it out, right? Who needs those pesky regulations?

mirimir 9y ago
I get the sarcasm :) But in fact, markets are great for many things. However, they're clearly vulnerable to information asymmetry and outright dishonesty, at least in the short term. I mean, demand for PCB-tainted oil for dust suppression did decrease dramatically after PCB content and toxicity were widely known. And demand for melamine-supplemented baby food also decreased dramatically after people discovered the issue. The problem was that more-or-less irreversible damage had already been done. Damages could be recovered through litigation, perhaps. But that doesn't fix poisoned ecosystems and children. So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty.
- gumby 9y ago
  > So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty. That's not the only source of problem. Another is managing the game theory of externalities. For example, if every transformer manufacturer is dumping its PCBs into rivers, no one manufacturer can afford to make "clean" transformers that dispose of PCB byproducts in a more ecological way as transformer buyers will presumably buy the cheapest one that meets the necessary performance characteristics. Regulation can add management of the ecological externality as a mandatory performance characteristic, disadvantaging no manufacturer relative to all others.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    True. Good point.