Some like to argue that regulation is always needlessly inhibiting, that we don’t need more government, but less. Clearly, though, in some areas we don’t have enough. From the Washington Post:

The company at the heart of a growing recall of processed foods knew that its plant was contaminated with salmonella but continued to make a flavoring and sell it to foodmakers around the country, according to inspectors at the Food and Drug Administration.

The whole “smaller government” thing is a neat bit of propaganda to throw about if you’re talking to an audience that isn’t exactly clear on what it is that government does. By percentage of the budget, it actually does three things: (A) defense, (B) entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, (C) a whole bunch of other things that scrap for the money left over from (A) and (B). One area that gets short shrift is regulation, inspection, and enforcement in food. Yet, all we hear is that we need less government. As this latest salmonella story shows, as well as Toyota’s scoffing attitude towards their customers’ safety is further evidence that in the absence of regulation and enforcement what you would get is the right to have your wife, your children, yourself, murdered by shoddily made products and poisoned food.

Oddly enough, it was these kinds of deaths, real ones, not hypothetical, that inspired government regulation in the first place. I’m pretty sure that the human race hasn’t evolved past selfishness and greed in the last 100 years, so the reasons to police those that would pass of the odd murder in pursuit of profit doesn’t seem to have gone away. All rise and join me in a snack of hepatitis hamburger and bovine growth hormone milk before we give the baby her bisphenol bottle and lay her down in her radioactive crib.