Few Americans consider themselves at significant risk from ugly or misshapen tomatoes, writes Gary Galles. But the Florida Tomato Commission (FTC) “protects” those of us outside the state against any of their winter tomato growers who want to put “product of Florida” on any fruit (yes, tomatoes are fruit) not up to standard in size, shape, skin quality or color. As a result, we won’t be seeing any Florida UglyRipe tomatoes this winter. History offers few more blatant uses of state power over trade in the service of a special interest. [Full Article]
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3216/leave-fruit-aesthetics-to-the-consumer/
Leave Fruit Aesthetics to the Consumer
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A beautiful, well-written article which demonstrates a perfect example of how the FTC, FDA and other government comsumer “protection” agencies only hurt the comsumer, while empowering and enriching others at thier expense. It’s the perfect article to show to my brother-in-law, who can’t grasp how individuals and markets can function without these governmental interventions.
Now if only there was an article showing how Kosher certification labs are the markets’ self-imposed answer to kosher-consuming standards.
On my above post, I can’t understand why I hit the “M” key instead of the “N” key the both times that I typed (or at least attempted to type!) the word “consumer”.
Amazing how far government bureaucrats will go to expand their scope of influence and control. Just wait until this Florida ugly tomato precedent gets into the ECE . . . . and they elect to impose aesthetic standards on the practioners who conduct their trade in the red light districts of Paris and Amsterdam.
Harry
Another food-related story http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/latimests/20050225/ts_latimes/groupwantsgovernmenttoregulatesaltinfood>courtesy of Yahoo. Let’s regulate salt!
Oh dear, my link didn’t work.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/latimests/20050225/ts_latimes/groupwantsgovernmenttoregulatesaltinfood
In the last paragraph of the USA Today article linked in the story, Reggie Brown, the manager of the tomato committee admitted outright that he couldn’t compete (he used the phrase “meet that standard”) with the UglyRipe taste. How can anyone think that the committee’s actions are anything but wrong?
Tongue-in-cheek attitude, that is the antidote.
Since the committee has declared that this is not
s tomato, the grower should market it as, say “motato”.
(Come on, you say they are not tomatoes? Then they
must be something else other than tomato)
The market will soon figure out the motato and tomato.
As I understand it the whole ‘tomato shortage’ we supposedly went through, still going through? is nothing less than hogwash. There are a lot of tomatoes too small, the wrong coloration and ‘ugly’ that just can’t be sold because of these regulations.
thanks for the great post. love food reated stories like this one.
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