Letter to the Editor,
To: MP, Damien Kurek:
How many natural health care products on grocery and drug store shelves have been tested? By whom? The companies that manufacture the products?
We need to be protected from unscrupulous manufacturers and sellers. Without safeguards, the consumer will be at the mercy of very powerful “vested” interests.
Who then is monitoring those “vested” interests?
Did the Alberta Energy Regulator protect the civilians and the environment when Esso polluted the Athabasca River recently? If we have government agencies that don’t do their jobs, who will? Regulations don’t mean a thing unless there is enforcement of those regulations.
Case in point: Ex-president Donald Trump reduced regulations on the production of the Boeing Max 737 (cutting red tape). So, what happened? Two of those plane crashed with the loss of over 300 lives.
Was anyone held accountable for his actions?
How about the person chosen by him to run the Federal Aviation Authority?
Another example: Over a thousand train wrecks occur in America every year. Why? Because regulations governing the safety of train service were reduced by the Trump Administration (under the guise of “cutting red tape”) resulting in more train accidents.
Who has been held accountable for those safety violations?
Who is assigned to monitor the safety of natural healthcare products sold to the consumer? What ingredients are in those products? Who tests them? The manufacturers, or independent governing bodies like the FDA or the CDC in America? Self-regulation doesn’t work because there will always be people and businesses who will not be transparent about the safety of their products.
Please read Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Barry Meier (the Sackler family; Perdue Pharma; pharmaceutical industry).
Read Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle (Re: The meat packing industry in America). Do we still have problems with that industry? How about the use of underage children to work in meat processing plants? Again, we can have rules and laws governing businesses, but if we don’t have someone to actually “govern” them, “cutting red tape” won’t protect the consumer.
The notion that the individual can protect himself/herself is a fallacy. As the old saying goes, “Money talks”.
We can’t have the coyote guarding the chicken coop, nor can we have the Mafia providing police protection.
George Thatcher
Olds, Alta.
