[This letter appeared in Florida Today on December 30, 1997]
I agree that food safety is a very important issue. However, what truly is
not needed is yet another government bureaucracy as Florida Today advocated in a recent
editorial "Nation needs new department to help ensure food safety."
Our food is already extremely safe. The public gets fearful because the media and the
government exaggerate the true dangers in our food supply. The better solution to this
problem is private third party certification. Thousands of regulations and many
departments of government could be eliminated if companies had their products certified as
safe by private companies competing in an open marketplace.
For almost every problem, the market can and will produce a better solution than the
government. The monster is already too big to control.
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