Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/01/business/01food.php
The FDA is supposed to be in charge of keeping our food safe. Whether this is an efficient way to do things is not really the focus of this post as much as how well this article about the FDA highlights one of the points we talked about a little earlier this semester.
What is the goal of every government bureau? To maximize its operating budget. For the FDA the wave of food contamination is the perfect opportunity to get a new larger budget pushed through whichever process is required. There are ample baptists (this article calls the critics) to decry the small budget of the FDA as the reason for these contaminations were not caught before they reached the public. Clearly with the assumption that a bureau's primary concern is to make sure they are constantly in demand and given a higher budgets each year, it is pretty to think of who the bootleggers are. Even though the increase in bad press may seem like a bad thing for the FDA it is unlikely that anyone there will be held personally responsible. So to recap.. they messed up but no one will have to face any tangible consequences and because of the press they will probably be looking at an increased budget fo next year. Sounds pretty good to me.
And by good I of course mean bad and terrible and just wrong. There have to be better ways to do thins sort of police work that provides the right kind of incentives instead of screw and get more money...
EDIT: Well lame another post about the FDA right before this one... oh well it is a different angle on the whole thing at least.
The FDA is supposed to be in charge of keeping our food safe. Whether this is an efficient way to do things is not really the focus of this post as much as how well this article about the FDA highlights one of the points we talked about a little earlier this semester.
What is the goal of every government bureau? To maximize its operating budget. For the FDA the wave of food contamination is the perfect opportunity to get a new larger budget pushed through whichever process is required. There are ample baptists (this article calls the critics) to decry the small budget of the FDA as the reason for these contaminations were not caught before they reached the public. Clearly with the assumption that a bureau's primary concern is to make sure they are constantly in demand and given a higher budgets each year, it is pretty to think of who the bootleggers are. Even though the increase in bad press may seem like a bad thing for the FDA it is unlikely that anyone there will be held personally responsible. So to recap.. they messed up but no one will have to face any tangible consequences and because of the press they will probably be looking at an increased budget fo next year. Sounds pretty good to me.
And by good I of course mean bad and terrible and just wrong. There have to be better ways to do thins sort of police work that provides the right kind of incentives instead of screw and get more money...
EDIT: Well lame another post about the FDA right before this one... oh well it is a different angle on the whole thing at least.
