As is the case in other industries, the emphasis is on maximizing profit by minimizing costs and maximizing sales. The well being of eaters is not high on the priorities list of big food corporations. A few decades ago, after having consumed herds of cattle during my lifetime, I learned about some of the disgusting practices of the meat industry. I became a vegetarian.
The "free market" is not kind to small farmers. They face all the traditional hazards of farming: such as too much rain, drought, assaults by pests ranging from bacteria thru insects, rodents, and even deer. Help from the government, generally tailored to the needs of big corporate farm operations, is minimal. They have to compete with the big farms, who exploit cheap immigrant labor.
Other industries
There are notorious cases where private companies (often whole industries) have marketed useful products that turned out to have side effects seriously harmful to large numbers of people. Tobacco, lead, and asbestos are prominent examples [7]. For many years after the harmfulness of these substances had been clearly established, companies marketing them fought to obscure the issues, and to keep them in use. And, to this day, they continue to resist efforts to stop the use of these dangerous materials. Tobacco companies continue to thrive, with the growing number of smokers in Asia and elsewhere in the world offsetting the reduction in the number of American smokers. Efforts to ban asbestos use in the US have been fought off by the companies (tho American use has greatly declined) [8]. Leaded gasoline is still used in propellor type airplanes and in helicopters.
There are many useful applications of nanotechnology, but, here again, those manufacturing or selling nano-products cannot be relied on to determine whether they are free of hazards to individuals or the environment. Many studies have pointed out dangers associated with various nano-products [9]. But, as in so many other cases, concern over the bottom line is what governs corporate marketing decisions. Here too, there is no strong free market mechanism for protecting the public against dangerous products.
Other countries
The US is not the only country with these problems. Consider China, a nation with a socio-economic system that is a grotesque mix of elements of capitalism and communism, ruled by a dictatorial government. Industrialization seems to have run wild [10], with no more than token attention paid to protecting health and the environment. The air in China is unfit to breathe, almost every body of water is grossly polluted, and a substantial portion of farm land has been contaminated by a variety of substances of varying degrees of toxicity, to the point where it is unusable. This in a country that virtually invented civilization at a time when Europeans were little more than savages.
Most of the other industrialized nations are showing more regard for public health and the environment than is the US. For example, Germany is perhaps the leading nation in efforts to reduce energy consumption and to increase the proportion of energy from renewable sources [11]. But no nation is doing a truly adequate job in addressing the problems discussed here.
Suggestions
Rather than deterring the production of hazardous, or unhealthy, or environmentally destructive products, market forces often tend to stimulate such production. Greed is simply not effective in motivating concern for the public interest. Just as we need societal mechanisms to police stock markets so as to minimize fraud, and anti-trust laws to prevent monopolies and cartels from undermining free markets, we need government oversight to protect us from a deluge of potentially harmful products [12]. The problem is getting worse as products become more complex, and as corporations marketing them have become increasingly powerful politically, and hence more successful in weakening the oversight process.
It would be wise to encourage both consumer and producer co-ops, which are less prone to engage in harmful practices. There are some activities that are best carried out by government. One example is postal service, which has been a governmental function since the birth of the nation. Another is standard setting. NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is another venerable American institution; its predecessor dates back to 1830.
It is essential that regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, be greatly expanded, so they could carry out their missions properly. They should have research labs to enable them to keep up with advancing technology. The agencies should also be authorized to fund relevant university research projects. The primary reason for substantially expanding the governmental R&D role is to cover many important subjects not interesting to private corporations [13]. Paradoxically, another reason is to deal with matters of very wide interest to industry. It would be more efficient to have government laboratories do R&D that would help many organizations, rather than have numerous companies each doing the same work in secret. Of course individual companies should remain free to do independent research.
We need many more scientists and engineers capable of objectively evaluating the efficacy and safety of a large and growing range of products and services. It makes no sense to expect people to impartially monitor the activities of their employers' organizations. This is another reason to expand substantially government R&D laboratories. They would be able to perform the above mentioned evaluation functions, or individual member of their staffs could serve on ad hoc evaluation committees, unbiased by commercial interests.
References
[1] Stephen H. Unger, "The Demise of Unions and Why We Need to Revive Them", Ends and Means, September 11, 2013
[2] Stephen H. Unger, "Safety Last--Corporate Profits First", Ends and Means, September 29, 2010
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