How to pay for a better food system?

Hm… It’s pretty hard to graph out 2011 budget numbers when *there is no 2011 budget*. So this image is inherently false.

However, even if you moved it back one year, you would see that the numbers are not accurate if you’re only breaking the budget up into three buckets. All non-discretionary spending is not at the same level as it was in 2001, though it may be at the same *proportionate* amount.

And what is that small gray unlabeled sliver anyway?

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

That’s one poor statistical analysis from a dubious source.

Just what we’ve come to expect from NYU “experts”.
Watch for the NYU online diploma coming soon – Discover card accepted!

We have got change our regulatory paradigm, the sooner the better. We need to devise a third party surveillance food safety system, contracted by the firms, with oversight of the private third party by government agencies. We need to make sure the purveyors from the point of origin to the purveyors, have full skin in the game. We simply have not had, do not have, and will not nearly have sufficient funds of taxpayer origin to support the directly regulated system at the level of scrutiny needed. We have a long history of enabling legislation constructing grand castles and then funding legislation then starving the agencies responsible for running the castle.

Quoting myself as JMG3Y at http://www.grist.org/article/food-we-need-legislation-to-fix-food-safety-and-our-oversight-agencies-to:

IMO some higher level systems thinking needs to be applied here.

In “Dancing with Systems” (http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Dancing.html) Donella Meadows wrote: “. . . starting with history discourages the common and distracting tendency we all have to define a problem not by the system’s actual behavior, but by the lack of our favorite solution. ” Another read of hers is here – http://www.sustainer.org/pubs/Leverage_Points.pdf

It seems to me that everyone’s favorite solution here is passing legislation and spending more money. I contend that as long as the underlying system is flawed, that is the incentives for all the parties in the product path aren’t present and aligned properly, Congress can’t write enough legislation or throw enough taxpayer money at the problem to fix it through direct regulation, whether it is food safety, the drug war, or financial derivatives. As a consequence of a flawed system, we move from wreck to wreck to wreck and I predict will continue to do so.

I agree, the data is skewed.

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