5 ms·

Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and leg

Not sure how much experience you have working with business or government but what you'll find is that large corporates will have 'access' to regulators and legislators who can legislate or enforce on their behalf. The senior people will know each other and get things moving. Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporates. So when you read a story and think things 'worked quite well'. It's just an example of selectively applying laws & regulations, which were only introduced to keep out competition and protect entrenched interests. That's why large corporates love regulations, it protects their entire business model and imposes significant costs on new entrants.

sunpar 6y ago
I think it's obviously true that monied interests will have greater access to regulators and corporations than smaller operations do. We should seek to limit that advantage when possible, but it's doubtful that we can ever truly eliminate it. Speaking specifically about this case though, it doesn't seem like a big business tossing its weight around, but some large multinational businesses working within existing regulatory and bureaucratic systems to ensure their competitors are not unfairly gaining by flouting the law. It is akin to an auto company finding another company has saved money by not complying with emissions standards.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
What do you think "access" looks like? There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access. What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again. The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be. >Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate. This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative. [1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.
- kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
  It's small relative to other industries but its still a multi-billion dollar industry. Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporates, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance. I'm sure many of these manufacturers are the largest employers in some congressional districts so it wouldn't be a surprise if they managed to get a congressman to write the FDA to focus attention on this. The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention. My point is that their scale and resources gives them access. A competitor breached a pointless regulation [1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. If one of the large corporates breached that regulation, they would have been able to quickly agree corrective action with minimal supply chain disruption. [1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    > but its still a multi-billion dollar industry There's 330 million people in the US. Everything the average person spends six dollars a year on is a multi- billion dollar industry. >Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporate, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance Think about how many people someone will work with and befriend over a lifetime. You're pretending that's a high bar when it's a low bar. >The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention. You should go to the NPA's website (linked in TFA, you have exolymph's comment to thank for prompting me to look it up), go to the membership directory and start looking up these pasta companies before you run your mouth. While many of the companies are wholly owned subsidiaries or larger more mainstream food brands but none of them seem to exceed the BLS definition of medium sized. If the FDA enforcement action unfolded the way we are all assuming it is then that would seem to indicate medium-smallish companies do have their legislator's ear (or they just tipped off the FDA directly and then just kept following up until the FDA was annoyed enough to do something). Edit: Here's Medallion Foods, Virginia Park foods which seem to be among the biggest (ballpark estimate based on facility sized and value of what's in the parking lot) and one in Montana that I thought was cool because they had the street named after them. All these companies seem to have their office location the same as their manufacturing location so it's kind of hard to get a sense of scale. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,259.82h,68.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAedqU5SJSVf0wfMgudWXOA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,... https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,320.89h,84.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seEYftwrFVZtB3Y1vvwK3xQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,... https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,118.41h,73.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sszOaLiY6UnTRFbFJG5ECiw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,... > A competitor breached a pointless regulation[1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. >[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports. The last century was 20yr ago. HN would be out for blood if someone was caught importing completely functional catalytic converters or bicycle helmets that didn't meet some irrelevant to performance nuance of the law. HN is sympathetic in this case because the product in question is an upscale-ish pasta. If regulations on some ingredient were being manipulated in a way that was only affecting production of cheap lite beer we'd be reading through several hundred snarky comments about how this is a good thing.

sunpar 6y ago

I think it's obviously true that monied interests will have greater access to regulators and corporations than smaller operations do. We should seek to limit that advantage when possible, but it's doubtful that we can ever truly eliminate it. Speaking specifically about this case though, it doesn't seem like a big business tossing its weight around, but some large multinational businesses working within existing regulatory and bureaucratic systems to ensure their competitors are not unfairly gaining by flouting the law. It is akin to an auto company finding another company has saved money by not complying with emissions standards.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

What do you think "access" looks like? There is no "big pasta". There's like a handful of companies[1] that make it all. I'm sure the execs all own yachts but if you were to compare executive fleet displacement it's more of a Venezuelan navy than a French navy. They can't just call up their lobbyist who's already scheduled to golf with a congressman every other weekend and tell them to bring it up on their next trip. Only the Googles and the Exxons of the world have that kind of access. What really happens is the some company notices that "hey, those other people are doing X and they're not supposed to, I'm losing money because of it. Then they call up the congressman in their district and say "I employ people in your district and pay taxes and I am getting screwed because morons who you have oversight over are not doing their jobs, make them do their goddamn jobs" but in nicer words and with situation specific details. And then the congressman's aid writes an email to someone that explains the situation and asks the relevant people to please take a look at it again. The law might be stupid and the complaint might be petty but it's better than living in a world where state and federal legislators don't try and solve their constituents problems with government. For every stupid pasta beef there's a dozen more legitimate complaints that cross the desk of whichever staffer is doing constituent relations. My point is that the process of getting "access" to one's congressman is not really as nefarious as people make it out to be. >Medium sized businesses (up to $100m revenues) will find it very difficult even getting a response. Even getting their attention is a competitive advantage for large corporate. This hasn't been my experience but I suspect that it's going to depend a lot on the political optics of the specific industry relative to the representative. [1] Check out this handy list and research the companies if you don't believe me. https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ https://ilovepasta.org/membership/membership-directory/ Many are owned by larger brands but they are not particularly big businesses themselves. These are on the order of The Office sized companies.

kqvamxurcagg 6y ago
It's small relative to other industries but its still a multi-billion dollar industry. Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporates, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance. I'm sure many of these manufacturers are the largest employers in some congressional districts so it wouldn't be a surprise if they managed to get a congressman to write the FDA to focus attention on this. The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention. My point is that their scale and resources gives them access. A competitor breached a pointless regulation [1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. If one of the large corporates breached that regulation, they would have been able to quickly agree corrective action with minimal supply chain disruption. [1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  > but its still a multi-billion dollar industry There's 330 million people in the US. Everything the average person spends six dollars a year on is a multi- billion dollar industry. >Each of the largest companies will have PR agencies, personal contacts within the FDA, revolving door of staff between the FDA and the corporate, positions on standards committees, board members who have spent a life time in food safety governance Think about how many people someone will work with and befriend over a lifetime. You're pretending that's a high bar when it's a low bar. >The same complaint from a small company will never get the same attention. You should go to the NPA's website (linked in TFA, you have exolymph's comment to thank for prompting me to look it up), go to the membership directory and start looking up these pasta companies before you run your mouth. While many of the companies are wholly owned subsidiaries or larger more mainstream food brands but none of them seem to exceed the BLS definition of medium sized. If the FDA enforcement action unfolded the way we are all assuming it is then that would seem to indicate medium-smallish companies do have their legislator's ear (or they just tipped off the FDA directly and then just kept following up until the FDA was annoyed enough to do something). Edit: Here's Medallion Foods, Virginia Park foods which seem to be among the biggest (ballpark estimate based on facility sized and value of what's in the parking lot) and one in Montana that I thought was cool because they had the street named after them. All these companies seem to have their office location the same as their manufacturing location so it's kind of hard to get a sense of scale. https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,259.82h,68.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sAedqU5SJSVf0wfMgudWXOA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0889449,-122.3631175,3a,75y,... https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,320.89h,84.66t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1seEYftwrFVZtB3Y1vvwK3xQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0173065,-117.3829804,3a,75y,... https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,118.41h,73.7t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sszOaLiY6UnTRFbFJG5ECiw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5168777,-111.2619547,3a,75y,... > A competitor breached a pointless regulation[1] from the last century which has prevented their product from being sold for a year. >[1] Many of these food regs are designed to enrich staple foods that were the main source of nutrients for low income families. That's just not an issue anymore and just prevents (high quality) imports. The last century was 20yr ago. HN would be out for blood if someone was caught importing completely functional catalytic converters or bicycle helmets that didn't meet some irrelevant to performance nuance of the law. HN is sympathetic in this case because the product in question is an upscale-ish pasta. If regulations on some ingredient were being manipulated in a way that was only affecting production of cheap lite beer we'd be reading through several hundred snarky comments about how this is a good thing.