[notreallyserio]

If you make the punishment for passing hazardous product high enough you could make a dent. Send the C-suite to jail if they cut enough corners that infants die -- you'll probably see a lot of improvements very quickly. Money fines won't be enough and are a complete waste of time and human life.

It still won't be perfect, but we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

[incone123]

China executed people for this years ago and I think public trust in the product has yet to recover

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8375638.stm

[yourapostasy]

I've read elsewhere in expat forums that PRC citizen parents with infants visiting the US will load up big parts of their luggage allowance on the return trip with formula. Costco is their favorite store to use. They similarly trust the US-branded formula sold from Costco in the PRC. The general supply chain QA and integrity US citizens take for granted domestically cannot be overstated as an important differentiator until you've traveled extensively around the world. US and EU supply chain integrity problems are nothing compared to many parts of the world.

[cyphar]

This isn't just in the US. In Australia there are have been limits on how much baby formula you can buy per day for years because Chinese parents do not trust domestic powdered milk and so there's an underground market for shipping baby formula from other countries to China at extortionate prices.

My impression is that they trust anything that is not from mainland China will be better than what they can get domestically.

[yourapostasy]

> ...so there's an underground market for shipping baby formula from other countries to China at extortionate prices.

I have long suspected years ago that in the US mysterious, sporadic local news reports of a Wal-Mart, CVS, Target, or similar store getting wiped out of all baby formula or all of a certain brand/SKU were simply rings of people scooping it up for this arbitrage over eBay, similar resale/auction sites or even WeChat. It doesn't seem systematic, and was very arbitrary which towns/cities they hit and when, but I've always wondered what the real story was.

[wonnage]

Probably because it’s like playing whack a mole, executing a few scapegoats isn’t going to fix the lack of regulatory oversight

[supertrope]

And since real reform would likely require regime change, activists outraged over the latest problem (train derailment, buildings not meeting earthquake code due to fraud, etc) go to jail for disrupting social harmony.

[aught]

he didn’t say execute them prison time is a much more effective incentive for cases resulting in death

[mauvehaus]

There's that bumper sticker: "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one".

I mean, I know that the lawyers and finance people would create such convoluted ownership structures that forcing a company out of existence and liquidating its assets would be meaningless, but apart from that detail, it has a certain appeal in the way many ideas that fit on a bumper sticker do.

[supertrope]

It's very rare for a corporate executive to even be charged let alone be convicted.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/us/salmonella-peanut-exec-sen...

[autoexec]

Which is why corporations get away with murdering, poisoning, and polluting. Lack of accountability combined with the incentive of obscene profits pretty much makes it impossible for anything to change. Throw in outright bribery and regulatory capture and it doesn't look like anything will improve any time soon. I doubt I'll see it happening in my lifetime, and it's sad that not even the ongoing poisoning of babies for profit is enough to force the needed changes.

I'll give congress some credit for being vocal about the problem at least. In a congressional report last year about the dangerous levels of heavy metals in baby foods they repeatedly concluded that the FDA's polices were "designed to be protective of baby food manufacturers" and they recommended more regulation, but still, I haven't seen any action that would address the underlying issues that allow a regulatory body to prioritize the profits of industry over the health and safety of the population.

If you're curious, that report can be read here: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....

There was also a follow up report on the issue you can read here: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....

[vkou]

You often don't get to be a c-executive without having a major appetite for risk-taking.

Short of shooting both the c-suite, and their families, I don't think this will align their interests with those of the public as well as you hope.

[shiftpgdn]

You would be surprised at how many people are on board with that level of punishment in the USA.

[efitz]

pour encourager les autres

[DoreenMichele]

you'll probably see a lot of improvements very quickly

More likely: people stop making baby formula entirely and women have no choice but to breastfeed, which is a problem if baby is lactose intolerant, among other things.

[seo-speedwagon]

Even if we buy your premise that actually putting teeth behind food safety regulations would cause a capital strike, that just provides opportunity for others to step in and fill the gap. Like your post alludes to there is a large and stable demand for safe formula. The problem is right now one company owns a majority of the market share thanks to the poor way the existing govt reimbursement program is structured

[DoreenMichele]

Temple Grandin is extremely influential in some spaces. I think she has probably designed like half the beef processing plants in the US.

She wrote up a set of safety guidelines for the beef industry and McDonald's adopted her recommendations. You couldn't sell beef to McDonald's without following her guideline.

McDonald's buys so much beef, this became the de facto industry standard.

You can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to love you. You can't get blood from a turnip. And draconian measures generally fail to get real results.

Carrots and stick sometimes work. But "the beatings shall continue until morale improves" is generally counterproductive. It doesn't supply the necessary competence for setting a higher standard and usually actively disincentivizes trying to solve the problem.

[rsync]

"You can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to love you. You can't get blood from a turnip. And draconian measures generally fail to get real results."

I might be willing to stipulate the above. However there is a different mechanism at work when actors in the system have skin in the game.

And so, I will see your Temple Grandin (who I admire) and raise you a Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Specifically: these producers need to be feeding their own children and raising their own families with these very same products.

Ironically, wealthy-global-north consumers (like foodco CEOs) are almost certainly not consumers of infant formula[1] (or lunchables or scent sprays or Monster drinks) so it is difficult to establish "skin in the game".

... and therein lies a tremendous amount of information. It should give consumers pause to learn that these products are not used - and likely disdained - by the stakeholders that produce them.[2][3]

[1] https://qz.com/1034016/the-class-dynamics-of-breastfeeding-i...

[2] http://www.freebooks8.com/Fiction_Library/3308/37.html

[3] “I don’t think my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable,” she told me. “They know they exist and that Grandpa Bob invented them. But we eat very healthfully.”

[bglazer]

I’m actually ok with beatings figuratively (or literally) if someone sells me poison to give to my baby.

It’s really that simple. We know how to make baby formula safely. We have known how to do that for a long time. It’s clearly profitable enough that companies are willing to do it.

But if you cut corners to boost profits and you end up poisoning babies you should be punished. There’s no need to tie yourself into knots reasoning that it’s actually not possible to enforce safe production of baby formula.

[XorNot]

Which is why it's a saying about how it doesn't work: it starts from a faulty premise, that people know how to the job properly and aren't out of malicious intent.

When in reality, the worker who's not maintaining the machine properly, isn't doing so because he was never instructed in it's operation, his supervisor who's "been doing this job for years, never had a problem with this", the manager of the department loves how many run hours they're getting from that machine and "it hasn't killed anyone" is said when the dangers of not cleaning it are mentioned in meetings, and after all they don't want to look bad to the executives who are saying serious things like "the economy is tightening, we need to find savings!" a lot.

In that chain, pick out who is directly responsible for the situation? Better: pick out who can be told to fix this problem, and they'll actually know how to do it? Pick out who you kill as a lesson to the others that will actually be learned?

Suppose you kill all of them: great, so what are you now doing to make sure the next group actually do their jobs properly?

[ADuckOnQuack]

Why not target the individual with the most influence in the organization, the highest C-level executive responsible for overseeing the operation? The threat of punishment for oversight failures on high level executives will naturally result in strict company cultures of safety and caution since the most powerful person faces real risk.

[tomp]

this comment makes no sense.

You're at the same time arguing "meat producers had to adapt to external guidelines to be able to continue selling their products"

and "government imposing external guidelines for producers to be able to continue selling their products would be inefficient".

Or am I misunderstanding your point?

[DoreenMichele]

Temple Grandin supplied a superior solution. A very influential company adopted it because it works better. They voted with their dollars. No one was told "You will go to jail."

She provided a better method. Market forces took care of the rest.

A gun to someone's head doesn't magically make them capable of coming up with better solutions.

[tehwebguy]

What does the market having a standard higher than the legal minimum have to do the law enforcing a minimum?

In your example, for instance, even if the law said Ronald McDonald would face the firing squad if their beef didn’t meet the legal minimum standard it wouldn’t matter because they are already exceeding it. The stick is not causing the carrot any trouble.

[quantified]

Lactose-intolerant to mother’s breast milk? Had to look up, apparently it is a thing. Thank you mother nature…

[p_l]

And that's just one of the MANY issues that can prevent breastfeeding, even when everyone involved wants to breastfeed.

[orzig]

someone says that after every scandal, and I’m open to it morally, but from an “actually improving compliance” standpoint: Is there any evidence it’s true?

[notreallyserio]

I'm not sure we've tried it or anything like it in the US. Intrinsic in this idea is the requirement that we actually enforce the rules, so when folks dismiss it as ineffective because it won't be enforced, I think they're missing the point.

I'd bet on improvement if we enforced the law and actually sent people to jail.

[refurb]

It’s a nice idea but nah.

In pharmaceuticals, a executive needs to sign off, under penalties of imprisonment, if prices reported to the US government are incorrect.

Fraud still happens and nobody goes to jail because hell , people don’t jail for more severe crimes so no court would impose the punishment.

[qiskit]

The largest fine in history was levied on pfizer. They paid a "criminal" fine. Nobody went to jail.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/pfizer-fined-23-billion-ille...

Today pfizer is one of the most trusted companies and many people will be mad at you if you criticize pfizer in any way.

[autoexec]

> Today pfizer is one of the most trusted companies and many people will be mad at you if you criticize pfizer in any way.

I don't buy that for a second. I see plenty of criticism of pfizer, for both what they've done before the pandemic and what they've done after it. This includes criticism from what many would consider "left-wing" sources. Whoever told you that they were beyond criticism lied to you, and you may want to reconsider trusting them in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-covi...

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/13/after-year-vacc...

[adhesive_wombat]

I was listening to a podcast recently where a left-wing host had a right-wing guest. The guest said it was strange that in the right there are so many subgroups that are all infighting and disparate, but the left sees them as a monolithic whole. And the host said that they was very funny, because his impression is that broadly opposite: the left is fractured and the right, despite the cliques and subgroups, generally sticks together. Which is what has been phrased as "the right falls in line, the left falls in love".

So it seems that everyone (or at least many) have an inherent bias to view the "other" as much less nuanced then they are themselves. The thought that a left-winger might oppose Pfizer in some ways while supporting the vaccine[1] is as unexpected as a left-winger opposing Obama's drone policies to someone who doesn't see the detail of the other side.

And the same goes in reverse, I hasten to add. And the same goes for every other A Vs B situation: the other side are all humans too and humans are complicated.

[1]: how is this even a left-right thing?

[autoexec]

I don't think many on the left would be surprised that there are factions within the right, There is a view that the right won't hold themselves accountable though which I don't think is unfair.

The right can't view the left as entirely monolithic either. They get a lot of mileage out of phrases like "The left eats their own" and "Democratic civil war" which, again, not unfair.

I think it's just easier to demonize a caricature so that's what ends up in heavily repeated talking points which then get regurgitated even when they're demonstrably false or ridiculous.