Hi, Loren Muldowney said
Bottom line, if I get brucellosis and die, as a result of stubbornly
exercising my own judgement, then I'll be dead. This does not
constitute a public health emergency. So write "it seems fair to me" on
my tombstone. It is only a private tragedy.
This is an important point, but controversial. Loren is saying that a few
"private tragedies," or even a lot of them, do not add up to a "public
health emergencies." I'd say the debate would be, how many private
tragedies does it take?
In Minelle's reply she mentions:
At 08:07 AM 1/24/00 -0600, Minelle & Joe Paloff wrote:
>Hi,
>... I personally would feel awful, if I gave or sold some of my
>raw milk to someone who became ill from it. Not all people feel this way, I
>know, just as irresponsible companies care little for the health or
>well-being of their workers, citing they want no interference from the
>government.
I think most "people" would "feel awful" like Minelle under the
circumstances mentioned. And they would pay a price in lost business good
will and patronage, if not in liability judgements. To avoid situations
that end up making them "feel awful," small proprietors do the best they
know how. Of course, ignorance and carelessness enter in. In the case of
corporations, they cannot "feel awful." Only people. Corporations are by
nature "irresponsible," to a more or less precisely defined degree, having
been created in order to limit liability.
Instead of relying upon corporations to avoid "feeling awful," we must
regulate them. The one-size-fits-all type of food safety regulations
essential for the survival of the corporate system. They say it is to
protect consumers, which it does to some degree, not entirely, given the
nature of our production system. But the real reason they exist is to
protect the corporate producers and the production system as a whole.
My two cents.
John Lozier
To Unsubscribe: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg". If you receive the digest format, use the command
"unsubscribe sanet-mg-digest".
To Subscribe to Digest: Email majordomo@ces.ncsu.edu with the command
"subscribe sanet-mg-digest".
All messages to sanet-mg are archived at:
http://www.sare.org/htdocs/hypermail
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 06 2000 - 12:00:25 EST