The rules are the rules

I'm against most of the rules too.

 

In my town, she would have an easy-peasy solution.

Several of the local churches are equipped with commercial kitchens and they're renting out space, or letting people use them for free to make and sell various foodstuffs.

An 11 year old would easily qualify for the free space and she could sell cupcakes to her heart's content without fear of the man shutting down the business.

A town as big as St. Louis should have some similar options.

 

Yeah. That would probably work just fine.

I'm sure the 11-year-old could just commute to her after school job. It's not like her parents would want to keep an eye on her.

 

You didn't answer the question. At what age/revenue would you deem enforcement to be appropriate? At one end of the spectrum we have "65-year-old who mixes moonshine in his bathtub." At the other end we have "Five-year-old who mixes lemonade in a cooler." You'll agree that health inspectors are necessary parts of the bureaucracy (if not, read Upton Sinclair). So at what threshold should they start inspecting? I'd argue states should act as California and Oklahoma recently have and pass legislation allowing the operation of home-kitchen-based businesses provided A) consumers are aware the business is operated out of the home and thus is not subject to commercial-grade health inspections and, B) business operators are aware of the liability risk.

 

What rules are you against?

Food safety? Workplace safety? Non misleading labelling? Drug regulations?

 

After a few hundred people die from tainted cupcakes, Our God The Market will show people that they're no good. No need for government regulation.

 

John Stossel:

Most people believe that without government meat inspection, food would be filthy. We read The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's depiction of the meatpacking business, and assume that the FDA and the Food Safety and Inspection Service are all that stand between us and E. coli. Meatpacking conditions were disgusting. Government intervened. Now, we're safe! A happy ending to a story of callous greed.

The scheming lawyers behind the "Food Poisoning Bulletin" argue that without regulation companies will "cut corners." After all, they say, sanitation costs money, so lack of regulation "creates a competitive disadvantage for companies that want to produce quality products."

But that's bunk. It's not government that keeps E. coli to a minimum. It's competition. Tyson Foods, Perdue and McDonald's have brands to maintain—and customers to lose. Ask Jack in the Box. It lost millions after a food-poisoning scandal.

Fear of getting a bad reputation makes food producers even more careful than government requires. Since the Eisenhower administration, our stodgy government has paid an army of union inspectors to eyeball chickens in every single processing plant. But bacteria are invisible!

Fortunately, food producers run much more sophisticated tests on their own. One employs 2,000 more safety inspectors than government requires: "To kill pathogens, beef carcasses are treated with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum," an executive told me. She also asked that I not reveal the name of her company—it fears retaliation from regulators.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/05/food-bunk

 

Yes, we understand the Market Deity argument. Thanks, Reason.com, for putting it into far too many words.

 

JR asked.

Independent/trade organizations could regulate if the public demanded it. We already see this in other industries.

 

The answer couldn't be, "It's both," could it?

There was competition in the days of "The Jungle," too, but once all the competitors realized it was cheaper to not care about food safety, none of them did.

 

I can't decide whether this is naive bullshit, right wing corporate propaganda or just the good old Appeal to Authority fallacy

The idea that companies always act ethically is bizzaro naive.