Well I meant regulated in the sense of banning chemicals
the challenge that many industries face is that the lobby groups in a particular industry are subverting commonsense regulation, bankers get into bed with regulators and central bankers , the CSRIO gets in bed with Monsanto, to point of subverting commonsense and damaging society and our health. Take for instance the food pyramid we are supposed to eat from, most people have been educated that this is the healthiest way to live, no one question how it got there. People think milk is a good source of protein and calcium, yet milk is the cause of many if not most of our digestive diseases. This is just one link but you'll get the picture
http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html
yet its not the perception that 90% of people hold, most people think cows milk is good for you , yet the overwhelming scientific literature (not just the link I provided)says its a disaster.
If we were managing a zoo and all the animals started dying faster we as zoo managers would look very carefully at all the inputs and work out what was causing it. Imagine feeding a gorilla Coca Cola ? We would lose our zoo license very quickly, but in human society where where massive increase in serious health issues are hardly even noticed we dont question anything , we just believe what we are told and what we are told is often untrue.
Yes I agree Sorg you cant really be expected to track everything. Ive looked into it pretty deeply, the regulatory authority works fairly poorly in Australia (IMO) so people are told things are safe and history will take issue with the current prevailing wisdom like his done in the past. We live in an era of ignorance . Scientific method takes a long time, relationships with disease are hard to pinpoint. Cancer rates for instance have risen by 700% since the 70s, a lot of this is due to food manufacturing, some of it due to factory protein farming and some caused by pesticides and herbicides. How much can be attributed to what? Added to this , companies like Monsanto run interference at every level they can to try and maximize profits. Goldmans ability to lobby central banking policy isnt dissimilar to Monsanto's ability to lobby the scientific and political community, which is not that different to BAT's ability to lobby the medical fraternity about smoking.
It will have to be changed over time. Educating consumers is key and making sure regulation is in place to guide farmers when appropriate. Most people are slowly nutritional committing suicide .
I know the current accepted wisdom pushed by the economic rationalist is that regulation doesn't help, but I would submit that unregulated food production has been a self evident disaster, obesity rates at their current rates will have the vast majority of us obese in the next 20 years. Un regulated financial market dont work, in fact anything of any importance needs to be regulated , can you imagine fee market self regulated airline travel? How about medicine? Skyrocketing cancer rates , obesity and various other diseases would cause somekind of intervention, yet most people are blissfully unaware of the causes.
