[pjc50]

"Protection of the public from fraud in the marketing of food products represents one of the earliest forms of government regulation of commercial enterprise" -- https://www.jstor.org/stable/26658854 "FOOD DRUG COSMETIC LAW JOURNAL 39, 2-73 (1984) A History of Government Regulation of Adulteration and Misbranding of Food"

The introduction covers food regulation from Biblical and Roman times to the present. If you think about how many of the Biblical rules are devoted to food handling in some sense, it starts to become clear how food regulation is civilization and the state, as much as any other kind of ancient law. I will never understand the Libertarian dream of a "prelapsarian" world where everyone is free to sell poison to everyone else with no consequences.

[butlerm]

A libertarian would say that purveyors of poison would face civil and criminal liability after the fact if anyone was harmed.