It’s a Father Knows Best, big brother, nanny state …

When will they ever learn?

This is not Mary Travis wondering where all the flowers may have gone. (Check point here, while anyone under fifty Googles Mary Travis.) Rather, it is me wondering why this state government always has to learn the hard way, rather like a child who persistently steers their own course, oblivious to the sage advice that is available from within the family if only they had the common sense to ask.

This week’s community outrage over new regulations affecting egg producers is but the latest instance of a government (politicians and bureaucrats) that refuses to consult over regulations. It’s a Father Knows Best, big brother, nanny state, call-it-what-you-will attitude to regulation. And, every time, they get themselves into a public brawl that should have been completely avoidable. People react to fear, to rumour, to the unknown. They think the worst. That is human nature.

So why haven’t we all had a chance to consider these new regulations in the lead-up to them coming into effect on November 26? Why has it been sprung on us with such little notice? It seems to be par for the course, with an apparent unwillingness within government to engage in transparent and genuine consultation or even discourse with affected parties. On that basis, confusion and resentment are almost inevitable. And that’s before we even get to look at the actual content of the regulations.

TFGA has no problem with enforcing reasonable food safety standards – for eggs or for anything else. However, there has to be some relationship between risk and the scale of the regulatory burden. It’s the commonsense test.

I remain to be convinced that stamping eggs, as is required under the new national standard, is a reasonable response to the level of risk to consumers from contaminated eggs. If someone were to fall ill, the idea of rummaging through their kitchen waste bin looking for broken eggshells in search of an identity stamp doesn’t seem foolproof. Several days on, the rubbish is most likely to have been transferred to the waste bin and been picked up by the garbage truck. But that is the national standard, so we have to comply.

Perhaps understandably, small egg producers have cried foul over this and other requirements in the new code. These will cost them money – probably more money than they can afford for such a small level of production. That’s unfortunate.

However, regulations don’t come out of nowhere. These days, they are generally a response to increasingly unrealistic expectations about stripping all risk out of the environment, or paternalistic attitudes of protecting people from themselves. In this type of nanny state approach, that important balance between risk and response is missing; and often the resulting regulations don’t pass the commonsense test.

I’m constantly amazed, though, that the people who support more and more regulation of food and farmers are often the same ones who are outraged when the regulations they have championed impact on them directly.

We’ve seen that this week, with clamouring for small producers and people supplying farmers’ markets to be exempt from these new regulations.

If the health risks posed by potentially contaminated eggs are such that regulation to this level is deemed to be necessary; then surely that risk is the same for all eggs, and those regulations should apply to all eggs? The converse argument is that, if some eggs can be exempt, then the regulations are really not necessary for any eggs.

Regular readers will know I often talk about how farmers welcome the concept of a level playing field – but rarely see one that isn’t skewed against them.

I’m using eggs in this example only because this happens to be topical. Awhile back, we were shaking our heads over the regulations that are putting an end to the school fete cake stall; this week, it is eggs; next week, as the CWA pointed out, it will be jams. The logic applies across the board.

Now is the time for us to consider whether the pendulum of regulation has swung too far; and whether the nanny state approach is really what we want.