Jed, you mention Mr. Parnell and his case. I hope and believe that he did not think that the peanut butter he was producing would lead to any deaths. I suspect that he was of the opinion that this sort of issue has been around for many years and did not reflect any significant danger to the public.
I have read that a very large portion of chicken is infected during production as well. Surely, he assumed that this was business as usual and did not make a conscious decision to cause additional loss of life in a callous way. Does anyone really believe that only peanut butter was dangerous during that time frame? How many other foods were equally or more dangerous? Perhaps I am underestimating his level of criminality, but to put a businessman in jail for making a mistake in judgement is going a little too far. People make similar errors in judgement all the time. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> To: vortex-l <vortex-l@eskimo.com> Sent: Fri, Sep 25, 2015 5:10 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Brief explanation of Volkswagen scandal technical details Lennart Thornros <lenn...@thornros.com> wrote: However, one cannot make laws / rules that are violating what is practical if one is not prepared to pay the price. The people who draft these rules are industry experts, recruited from the leading companies. In the U.S., regulatory agencies never pass rules that have not be vetted by industry experts, and recommended by them. That is not to suggest that regulators are always captives of the industries they regulate, although in some cases they are! I am saying that regulations are always passed with cooperation and advance knowledge of the corporations being regulated. They reflect the best practices of responsible companies. In many cases, the corporations themselves ask for and pay for the regulations. In the past this was sometimes done to prevent competition by making it hard for new companies to enter the field, in a subtle but effective violation of anti-trust laws. That happens less often today. If the government were to try to force through regulations without industry consent, there would be a hue and cry. One of the purposes of regulations is to keep dishonest people from taking over an industry sector. For example, if food inspections are reduced you can be sure more vendors will sell peanuts tainted by salmonella. Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in prison for doing this. Responsible peanut suppliers do not want thousands of consumers poisoned and killed by salmonella because they know that people will stop buying peanuts if that happens. Criminals such as Parnell don't care how many people they kill. It is not enough to have general laws against poisoning people. You must have to have inspections and standards with a host of specifics about peanuts. Maybe this problem is only related to diesel motors but if not I can almost guarantee that other manufacturers have similar systems in place. I think the chances of that are zero to none. The other automobile companies are probably not run by blithering idiots who do things that will destroy the company. I expect experts are checking to be sure though. - Jed
