This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016. I'm Caleb Brown.

What has government done to our food? From promoting food waste to mandating chemical additives to fighting people who are themselves fighting hunger.

Government intervention at all levels is making food production less sustainable.

That from Bailin Linneken, author of the new book, Biting The Hands That Feed Us.

He argues that food safety should be based on outcomes and not rigidly mandated processes.

How do governments control not just the food that we buy but you know our

understanding of what we're actually buying? I mean governments at all level

get to define not just sort of you know what we can buy and

where but also even the definition of foods. There's a sort of a movement in government that's existed for several decades now that defines foods in particular

ways that sort of flies in the face of dictionary definitions of those same foods.

Give me an example of that.

I actually worked on a case in which the state of Florida defined skim milk as the mandated rule says that it must contain

added Vitamin A and there was a sustainable small creamery with think, three employees in the panhandle, and they were creating

purely natural skim milk.

And the state said, after a few years, oh, you don't add Vitamin A. And they said, well, no oh you don't add Vitamin A and they said well we no we don't

add anything and the state said well that's a problem and so the standard of

identity that the state had said they had to add Vitamin A. The absolutely amazing thing is

first the state said that they could call the skim milk instead of skim milk

they could call it quote non-grade A milk product, natural milk vitamins removed, end quote, which just

rolls off the tongue.

And of course, and they could not make any reference to skim milk.

Eventually the state softened up of it and decided that they could refer to their all natural

...