I'm inclined to agree with kd, but not so much with tyler and ys.
As far as the regulation debate goes, I'm inclined to be skeptical of businesses who are able to regulate themselves. Marxist in that respect I suppose.
No business can get away with sloppy practices in a free market, the government enables the precise behavior you are talking about, self-regulation that is no regulation at all. Have you hear of regulatory capture?
The best regulation of business involves consumers sending their dollars to the competition.
Of course small farms and businesses are sometimes exceptions but such businesses are being shutdown by bigger competition all the time now days.
The competition doesn't have guns. The government does. What is happening is that consumers are giving their money to the "bigger competition." The question is why.
Of course there is such a thing as over-regulation like Tyler describes in the case in UK. I'm relatively convinced the opposite is true in the US where inspection agents are sometimes not even allowed to do their job, harassed, and threatened to the point where all they are, are perfunctory, at best. Typically sanitary/etc abuses are worse the bigger the operation is.
All you have said only proves (if true) that (1) government regulation does not succeed in its aims and that (2) sanitary abuses subsist because consumers are too either stupid to alter their behavior or the risk/return to them is such that the benefit of consumption exceeds any expected negative outcome (which is quite low in the short term, but high in the long term). So consumers are happy and so are the big farms. So what exactly is the problem?
BTW Slankers is not a small farm operation by any means.
Good for them. Their success warms my heart.
ys... I'm not sure why he sounds so angry. I'm not worrying about anything really. All I stated was what I heard from a Slankers Representative.
I never said that all people doing RAF have to be well-educated about slaughterhouse processes and regulations, I simply made the comment that I don't see people who know much about it on this forum. I'm not sure what you're asking me to "figure out what works for me." I didn't title this thread "I can't buy slankers pt food, please help me find a food source!"
Personally I find I benefit from thinking and learning about multiple aspects of this lifestyle and its larger implications and don't really find pleasure in parading a know-nothing attiutude, but that's just me.
Who cares what the regulations are? Government regulations are for people who don't want to be bothered by the problems in our society, they would rather we just throw money at the "problem." Even better is to throw someone else's money at the problem. Government regulations involve controlling other people and threatening them with violence if they don't comply.