If they added an impact clause of, say, greater than 10,000 individuals affected, could you think of any ways around that?
My initial feeling is that it could protect small and local businesses and possibly encourage investments from large nationals who would find it less expensive to pay others to produce certain products.
'Sesame is the ninth most common food allergy among children and adults in the U.S. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sesame allergy is considered common among children who already have other food allergies. According to research reported by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a study found that approximately 17 percent of children with food allergies also are allergic to sesame.'
I'm not sure whether 17% of child food allergies counts as an edge case? Food allergies are serious stuff.
They are, but that's a potentially misleading statistic, on two counts:
First, it doesn't give any indication of the percentage of children with food allergies. Is it also about 20% (which would mean sesame allergies affect approximately 4% of children)? Or is it more like 4% (which would mean sesame allergies affect approximately 0.8% of children)?
Second, it doesn't say anything about the severity of the allergy. My brother-in-law has a severe, anaphylactic allergy to peanuts. Traces of peanut in anything he eats could kill him. On the other hand, I have a close friend with an allergy to tree nuts...that makes his throat kinda itchy for a while if he eats too many.
Yes, we need to be mindful of food allergies, and properly label foods for them. But that doesn't mean we should be using incomplete or misleading statistics to inform our decisions about how prevalent serious problems with certain foods could be.
Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small businesses. The crucial difference is that some local family owns the shares, rather than a bunch of people? And this is what we have to protect, at the cost of not being able to implement rules in our economy? If that’s the case, they’re holding back progress and it’s good when one goes under.
> Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small businesses.
Because today's small businesses can become tomorrow's large businesses. Each new rule is a barrier to entry. Here, for example, zero-contamination rules for sesame would make it impossible for a small business to make both sesame-containing and sesame-free products unless they can afford an entirely separate production line or long deep-cleaning periods between runs. Large business, large enough to have simultaneous production lines, can rearrange production more easily to avoid disruption.
With a large-enough regulatory fortress, incumbent businesses protect themselves from competition, losing that very "progress" that you champion.
Government forcing random small-time businesses to handle extreme edge cases is pretty evil to me.
If they added an impact clause of, say, greater than 10,000 individuals affected, could you think of any ways around that?
My initial feeling is that it could protect small and local businesses and possibly encourage investments from large nationals who would find it less expensive to pay others to produce certain products.
If the labeling is not consistent, it's not useful
'Sesame is the ninth most common food allergy among children and adults in the U.S. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), sesame allergy is considered common among children who already have other food allergies. According to research reported by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a study found that approximately 17 percent of children with food allergies also are allergic to sesame.'
I'm not sure whether 17% of child food allergies counts as an edge case? Food allergies are serious stuff.
They are, but that's a potentially misleading statistic, on two counts:
First, it doesn't give any indication of the percentage of children with food allergies. Is it also about 20% (which would mean sesame allergies affect approximately 4% of children)? Or is it more like 4% (which would mean sesame allergies affect approximately 0.8% of children)?
Second, it doesn't say anything about the severity of the allergy. My brother-in-law has a severe, anaphylactic allergy to peanuts. Traces of peanut in anything he eats could kill him. On the other hand, I have a close friend with an allergy to tree nuts...that makes his throat kinda itchy for a while if he eats too many.
Yes, we need to be mindful of food allergies, and properly label foods for them. But that doesn't mean we should be using incomplete or misleading statistics to inform our decisions about how prevalent serious problems with certain foods could be.
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The edge case here isn't just "anyone with the allergy" but "people with the allergy so severe that a trace amount will cause danger to them"
Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small businesses. The crucial difference is that some local family owns the shares, rather than a bunch of people? And this is what we have to protect, at the cost of not being able to implement rules in our economy? If that’s the case, they’re holding back progress and it’s good when one goes under.
> Eludes me why anyone ever gives a shit about small businesses.
Because today's small businesses can become tomorrow's large businesses. Each new rule is a barrier to entry. Here, for example, zero-contamination rules for sesame would make it impossible for a small business to make both sesame-containing and sesame-free products unless they can afford an entirely separate production line or long deep-cleaning periods between runs. Large business, large enough to have simultaneous production lines, can rearrange production more easily to avoid disruption.
With a large-enough regulatory fortress, incumbent businesses protect themselves from competition, losing that very "progress" that you champion.
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Around half of all workers work for small businesses.
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