It now becomes your responsibility to explain why the same mechanism did not prevent the Topps Meat Co. from pumping out 21.7 million pounds of contaminated meat before it was stopped by the USDA.
Actually, you're trying to have it both ways: you're saying that without the FDA, millions of pounds of contaminated meat will be sold--but then point out a glaring example in which the FDA
failed to prevent exactly that! I'd say it's
your job to explain why the FDA
waited two weeks before issuing the recall.
Also note that 21.7 million pounds of meat was recalled; that does
not mean that 21.7 million pounds of meat were contaminated. It's almost certain that not all of the meat was contaminated: the recall was issued so broadly because of
flawed record keeping. If the producer were better able to link shipments with specific processing plants and dates, they could have recalled far less--about 330K lbs, again not all of which was necessarily contaminated.
But most importantly of all, you're simply wrong: the recall was issued
September 25; Walmart had already pulled Topps meat off their shelves on
August 30, 25 days earlier.
This by the way, like the spinach episode, illustrates how the market (which is admittedly not altruistic) can look out for the well-being of customers. It's possible (though it would be foolish of them) for a supplier knowingly to release an unsafe product. The standard Marxist analysis says that this would be standard procedure: big, rich capitalists poisoning helpless workers to improve their bottom line. However, the "helpless" consumers have a powerful advocate: the
retailer. It's the retailer that deals quickly and harshly with suppliers, in order to protect
their profits from the damage done by angry (or sick or dead) customers. The individual customers complain to the retailers. The retailer, in this case Walmart, then socks it to the supplier, who either cleans up his act or goes out of business.
--Len.
