I don't understand why those things have to be mutually exclusive. I'm not saying regulation is the ONLY thing that made food better, but get this: Food quality was on a trend downwards in the late 19th century to the early 20th century, and it didn't change until regulation. Around the world, countries established food regulation and in every single instance, the quality of food reversed its trend from downward to upward.
Prior to the early industrial period, people just ate whatever local produce they had. They could inspect it for themselves, but they didn't have jars and food coloring to mask the rottenness of the food. The centralization of the meat industry and the rise of processed foods are just a couple of the reasons for the rise of food-borne illness. It was becoming easier and easier to misinform people and hide the nastiness of food. Food quality was going down until the regulations, not up.
Remember that the regulations that required farmers to pasteurize milk before they could sell it on the open market plummeted rates of tuberculosis. This is a direct cause and effect, not correlation, as acquiring TB through unpasteurized milk is a very well documented process.
For the trend of food quality to be reversed so sharply I must attribute this to regulations. Food testing, safe processing and such- these are all things that directly impacted the quality of food. To say the intermediary process of food testing did not cause tainted food to never reach shelves is an argument that I can't fathom anyone having. That's also a direct cause and effect relationship.
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Date: 20/7/11 05:44 (UTC)Prior to the early industrial period, people just ate whatever local produce they had. They could inspect it for themselves, but they didn't have jars and food coloring to mask the rottenness of the food. The centralization of the meat industry and the rise of processed foods are just a couple of the reasons for the rise of food-borne illness. It was becoming easier and easier to misinform people and hide the nastiness of food. Food quality was going down until the regulations, not up.
Remember that the regulations that required farmers to pasteurize milk before they could sell it on the open market plummeted rates of tuberculosis. This is a direct cause and effect, not correlation, as acquiring TB through unpasteurized milk is a very well documented process.
For the trend of food quality to be reversed so sharply I must attribute this to regulations. Food testing, safe processing and such- these are all things that directly impacted the quality of food. To say the intermediary process of food testing did not cause tainted food to never reach shelves is an argument that I can't fathom anyone having. That's also a direct cause and effect relationship.