Regulations for Idiots
In a wonderful little movie called, Mom and Dad Save the World, a couple is transported to a “planet full of idiots.” One little snippet involves the idiot army finding a Light Grenade. The writing on it says, “Pick me Up.” Everyone knows that when you do that, it lights up and you disappear. When they first find one, the Sergeant says, “Careful men, it’s a Light Grenade.” One of his men says, “Where?” whereupon he picks it up and, of course, disappears leaving a pile of clothes.
Sometimes it feels like our governments are treating us as though we need to be warned about Light Grenades. For example, a Wisconsin Senator has introduced the “Dairy Pride Act” to prevent ‘imitation products’ from getting “away with using dairy’s good name for their own benefit.” Imagine trying to trick consumers into drinking soy or almond based drinks that append the good name of milk to their product.
It doesn’t stop there, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is right now soliciting comments on whether meat, actual meat grown from meat cells instead of through an animal, should be allowed to have “meat” in their name. FDA is agonizing over similar problematic names for the milks, cheeses, fish and eggs made with similar processes but from plant-based ingredients.
But the work goes on for other products as well. In the last administration, FDA “tentatively concluded” that we no longer needed to specify the amount of cherries in cherry pie.
For the feds, this activity comes from the 1938 FDA law that created food standards. As we began to get more manufactured food, lawmakers worried that moms might be buying products that were made with different recipes than “mothers used to make.” Women were increasingly going to work outside the home (about 25% in 1938) and there may have been anxiety about what was in packaged food.
In 1966, the Rolling Stones sang about Mother’s Little Helper (meprobamate, an addictive tranquilizer) taken by mothers because:
“Things are different today, " I hear every mother say
Cooking fresh food for her husband's just a drag
So she buys an instant cake, and she burns a frozen steak”
And “She goes running for the shelter of her mother's little helper.”
Apparently, the food names and recipes weren’t cranked out fast enough to help with at least a part of mothers’ anxiety. Despite the fact that mothers rarely make anything from scratch anymore, these rules are still with us and are still being actively created.
But it’s not just food, OSHA has tons of regulations for idiots. One OSHA rule says that workers should not put their hand in between a sling and the heavy object it is carrying. You think I’m kidding? Rule number (1926.251(c)(10) says “Hands or fingers shall not be placed between the sling and its load while the sling is being tightened around the load.” So, for example, if there was a sling hanging from a crane picking up a giant sailboat, OSHA says that you shouldn’t put your hand in between the sling and the sailboat. That must save a lot of injuries.
OSHA has also adopted a rule that runs many pages of 8 point type that has to be affixed to hazardous chemicals even if the chemical is contained in a tiny vial.
I’m sure that somewhere in the 180,000 pages of the Code of Federal Regulations there are ones that aren’t quite so bad, but shouldn’t there be a proscription against inherent silliness for regulations?
Later, in Mom and Dad Save the World, after a large number of the soldiers have picked up the Light Grenade and disappeared leaving piles of clothes one soldier calls into headquarters and says,
“I think we’re going to need some reinforcements out here.”
Are the feds going to ask for reinforcements to create and enforce more of these rules?