Because Everyone Should Have the Right to Puke

Here in Iowa our esteemed legislators recently passed — and the Governor signed into law — what I affectionately refer to as the “Big Ag/Industrial Egg Welfare Act”.  Shoving aside less pressing concerns confronting the state and the world like climate change, pesticide resistant weeds, peak oil, trade standoff’s with China among others, this initiative tackles a problem on everyone's mind by requiring retailers who participate in the subsidized nutrition program know as WIC to carry industrial eggs (AKA “conventional eggs”) if they also commit the heinous atrocity of carrying “specialty eggs” — or “good eggs” as I like to think of them. You know, eggs produced by chickens whose chickenness is honored with good food to eat, good land to freely range, and plenty of room to flap their wings.

I can sympathize. God knows it’s hard for me to make a living selling dozens of eggs. I can only imagine how hard it must be to thrive selling millions of them.

But this new law has an oddness to it that intrigues me.  On the one hand, our Legislature never misses an opportunity to suckle and succor Business Interests in general and Big Ag in particular -- and this law unapologetically guarantees the latter a sales stream -- it is unusual that our lawmakers have opted to elbow their way into meddling with how retailers stock their shelves.  Meanwhile, though this and recent Legislatures demonstrate resourceful creativity in conceiving new and imaginatively paternalistic ways to punish the poor, this law imposes no requirement on what must actually be purchased; rather it reserves its muscles for coercing merchants into a specific mandate for what must be sold.

Like any good and concerned citizen I wrote my two legislators -- one, a Democrat, and one, a Republican.  Only the former deemed this constituent's query worthy of response so I can't speak to the motivations and/or logic of the latter.  The response I did receive defended his support of this bi-partisan bill by asserting the importance of using government monies wisely (though I can't discern how this measure accomplishes that) and lauding the fact that conventional eggs are inspected.  That last argument, of course, is almost too circular to engage.  Hypothetically, inspections sound like a good thing -- if we were to actually accomplish them.  These same legislators and their colleagues at the federal level, however, so routinely cut the budgets of such inspection programs -- in part through the protestations of the industry lobbyists who, let's face it, don't really like inspectors snooping around, alongside that elusive, Holy Grail-like quest to "reduce the size of government."  In my response to my legislator's response, I allowed as to how I had never -- ever -- heard of a "specialty egg" recall, and that he has more confidence than I do in our vaunted "inspection" system.

As if on cue, this weekend we woke to reports of yet another salmonella-tainted corporate egg recall.  Rose Acre Farms of Seymour, Indiana is recalling over 2 million eggs produced in their North Carolina factory farms and sold in nine states under numerous labels because...well...because they were making people sick.  Fever, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

Thank goodness these things get inspected -- although it would probably be more helpful if they were inspected before they were sold.

And thank goodness we now have this helpful law signed and on the books.  It would be a terrible thing if the poor of Iowa were deprived of their own fair share of salmonella.  Everyone, after all, should have the right to puke.