Labeling Food Destined For Restaurants
The Legislative branch of the USA government thinks they’re helping small businesses by not requiring ingredient labeling on packaged foods destined for restaurants, claiming that labeling will increase the cost of the foods, thus hurt small businesses, when actually they’re helping the large corporations who manufacture those products.
Small businesses would be better served if they paid the same unit price as do big businesses for the identical product. Instead congress passes laws that piece-meal assistance out to those challenged by their small size in the form of useless mandates that hurt the customer who shops at smaller businesses.
Convenient Stores Need A Revamp
Lottery, beer and wine. Who does that help and who does it hurt? It helps the state and federal governments more than anyone else. Convenience stores are a prime example of price gouging based on wholesale costs. The wholesale costs for convenience stores are about what retail costs are for large grocery stores. Those grocery shelves in convenience stores mostly stay empty, because in low income neighborhoods nobody can afford the prices. To whose benefit is that? Who wins, who loses?
Guess where you’ll find convenience store owners in the evening? If there’s a casino nearby, they’ll be there. Who wins, who loses? The state and federal governments always win with taxes that come out first, then when you win, they win again. They basically tax your winnings twice.
The goal should be to better serve the customer communities who pay to consume products that they have a right to know are safe for them to consume at reasonable prices. In reality it is both the large and small businesses that get served better by congress, when labels are left off altogether or when ingredients are hidden under other non-specific categories. Define a ‘natural’ ingredient. How so? There’s no accountability for what’s in the food you’re being served or the groceries you buy. Essentially manufacturers can put whatever they want to put in the recipes/formulas unbeknownst to you.
Even allergens aren’t mandated by law to be listed on restaurant food labels. Even when labels appear on packaging, nobody in the kitchen knows what to look for, when a customer inquires or contents get transferred from packaging to bins thus the information trashed along with the containers.
Nobody fights for it and even if individuals want it, they’re not organized enough to fight for it. Why should we all have to fight for everything we deserve? Our elected officials should know by knowing themselves what we need and deserve.
We The People elect politicians to fight for us. That’s their job. Obviously, they’re not doing their job. The government keeps telling the populace to eat out, support your local restaurants, but then they spit in your food by denying us the right to know what’s in it.
People have dietary demands based on health. Others have dietary demands based on religion and still others based on morality and conscience. The government has left out altogether those people who eat based on morality and conscience – the ones who want no animal products in their food. Sure, they’re the minority here, but in a country where government raises up minorities, they slap down the animal-freers – those who don’t kill other animals for their food.
All foods need by law labeling that lists every ingredient, and made available to all customers. The restaurant foods need to be held to the same standard as food destined for grocery shelves.
Congress cites problems with getting product in foreign lands where the USA outsourced their food factories, saying the manufacturers often substitute something not normally used in the recipe. That to them justifies eliminating ingredient labels, because the labels would be inaccurate. So their solution was to use no label. That’s even more inaccurate. This is a typical knee jerk solution. The proper solution is to get your product in on time. If not, then you wait, you don’t add grated cardboard to your hot dog recipe and get away with it.
People who don’t eat animals are being discriminated against based on their morality and conscience. They are your future, like it or not. End the unjust discrimination before you start a food war.
THE ANIMAL-FREE CHEF TEST KITCHEN 