One benefit would be lower food prices and a wider set of options for people.
But, let me change the approach a bit …
I believe in letting people make their own decisions on what they buy. If you have someone who wants to buy meat and someone who wants to sell meat and neither of them want the USDA involved, then I feel that it is wrong to force either of them to have to deal with the USDA just because you (and others) want the meat inspected. If you want the meat inspected, then get the meat you buy inspected. Let everyone else be.
I believe that Ron Paul’s issues with the FDA stem directly from this issue – that the government is telling people what they can and cannot buy and telling businesses what they can and cannot produce. That should not be their role and I don’t believe it is their right. This is what is broke.
As pri_dk once said on a different type of meat market, it “… is an independent transaction between consenting adults – we should all have the ‘freedom’ to participate”
The way these arguments always go is – the guy proposing more freedom says “The government is involved in X when they should just leave people be and let them make their own decisions” Then someone says, “If the government agency involved in X disappeared, all these bad things would happen.”
Then the freedom guy says “the market would figure out a way that is better” and the other guy says “I don’t think the market could possibly come up with better so therefore the gov has the right to tell all of us what to do and how to live our lives”
A better answer than “the market would figure out a better way” is “I would rather choose freedom and let those bad things happen because the people would be making their own decisions”
So, you say it aint broke because these agencies are doing a job of protecting against bad things and you appreciate that. In reality it is broken because they are forcing people to make decisions – an approach I loathe.
So, I feel the FDA/USDA could serve us more appropriately by letting us know their opinion of things that could potentially harm us, but not as an agency that dictates what can and cannot come to market. And, they should be funded, in the end, by people who buy the products that are inspected, not by the population as a whole through taxes.
Lets say someone is dying of cancer and there is a drug that could help them but it is not available on the market because the FDA has either not gotten to it or they have disapproved it for some reason. Why shouldn’t the cancer victim be able to deal directly with a drug manufacturer directly, knowing full-well that it is not FDA approved ? As long as the risks are known and the sign the paper that says this is not a fully tested drug and it could kill them and they see the FDA report on that drug, how can you justify giving anyone the authority to tell them they can’t ?
So, whether or not you think something would evolve to replace the FDA is not material to the most important reason why the FDA should be stripped of their power to dictate what can and cannot come to market.
Just because you want someone to inspect your products before they hit the market doesn’t mean that the rest of the country should pay for it and be forced to live within your restrictions.
