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11/20/08
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October
09, 2006 Last month, news of an E. coli infection that originated in a bag of fresh spinach packaged by Natural Selections Foods, kicked off a nationwide frenzy. More than 180 people became sick from eating spinach, 97 of whom were hospitalized. One person died. The company in question is in total meltdown, and growers around the country are redoubling their efforts to make sure that every leaf is clean and pure. At the first notice of problems, five different companies immediately announced a recall, as did merchants around the country. Baggers started shipping salad with greens other than spinach. Grocery stores immediately switched vendors. Once it became clear that Natural Selection of Northern California was the culprit, distributors started making contracts with Southern California and Canadian companies. Consumers stayed away in droves, and parents around the country did an about-face on their opinions of spinach. This is one of the benefits of the information age, when word gets out to hundreds of millions in a matter of minutes. The response was a marvel of how markets can work. A valuable product said to bring health suddenly becomes a source of sickness and within hours, people not only stop eating it; it isn't even available for purchase! Compare the response time with the way governments at all levels responded to Katrina, for example. (Read the rest here. Click the "back button" to return to The Price of Liberty.)
Other articles at the von Mises Institute (There are thousands of them, all free.) Defense
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for Humane Studies National
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Archives The
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Idea of a Private Law Society The
Source of Prices Enterprising
Education: Doing Away with the Public School System Why
is Medical Care so Expensive? The
Snare of Government Subsidies How
We Come to Own Ourselves Is
All-Day Kindergarten An Economic Fix? The
Justice and Prudence of War: Toward A Libertarian Analysis The
Antifederalists Were Right Click
the "back button" to return to The Price of Liberty.)
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