This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 5th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The FDA has a massive impact on our food supply,

but it's not clear that the agency's statutory mandate is something it can or necessarily

should execute.

Economist Richard Williams is author of fixing food, an FDA insider unravels the myths

and the solutions. We spoke this week. You were, as far as you

know, as far as anyone knows, the first economist at the not have economists at least attempting to inform their decisions about regulation.

So why did it take the FDA so long to get some economists in there? Well, I think it was because like all regulatory agencies, they had to be forced into doing

it and what forced them originally was Jimmy Carter's executive order saying that we had to look

at the benefits and costs of our big regulations and then obviously

President Reagan came in and he doubled down on that and said not only do I want you to look at the benefits and costs,

I want benefits to exceed costs and he put in a wide road,

Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to oversee all those regulations.

Give us a sense of the contours of the FDA's powers over American's food?

Well, of course, as you know, it's not just food.

FDA does regulate 80% of pretty much of all foods.

It's all foods with the exception of meat and poultry and some eggs.

Those are regulated by USDA.

And in terms of their scope and power,

FDA has been called the most powerful regulatory agency in the world.

So what does that look like for products that we purchase off the shelf?

...