Trump would end food safety regulations
It may sound cool to want to eliminate regulations, unless you actually understand how those regulations protect us.
Trump’s campaign distributed a fact sheet outlining “specific regulations to be eliminated.” Among other things, this fact sheet took aim at “the FDA Food Police.”
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Before some regulations…
One of the worst offenders was ketchup manufacturers. As Andrew Smith lays out in his surprisingly detailed history The Tomato in America, the tomato growing season lasted only from mid-August to mid-October, too short of a time period for ketchup manufacturers to make a year’s supply of their product. So they would try to increase their supply of tomatoes by concentrating tomato pulp and storing it for use in the off-season. Due to unsanitary storage practices, however, the pulp often became a breeding ground for mold, yeast, spores, and bacteria.
Some producers would try to fight such contamination by doctoring their ketchup with chemicals such as “boric acid, formalin, salicylic acid, and benzonic acid.” Others would simply sell a product that was “filthy, decomposed and putrid,” according to Smith.
This is what the free market offered consumers in the absence of regulation.
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