Relying on potential lawsuits alone to ensure compliance with complex requirements is irresponsible.
That's like saying that the customers and shareholders of a given company are sufficient because they can sue, and therefore financial audits of the company are unnecessary.
The solution doesn't have to be a heavyweight centralized agency, either. Simply requiring periodic tests by an independent, licensed third party (just like financial auditors) should be sufficient.
There's lots of competition in food manufacturing. Your competitors would likely suggest an investigation if your company started selling something like 10cal/Tb butter. If your swindling falls under the threshold of notice, then honestly you're probably within the fairly generous acceptable error bars anyway.
We do this for meet and it's done wonders for the quality of products that fall under the USDA.
The FDA is technically in charge of the doing these inspections for stuff that doesn't fall under the USDA, but they are fully captured doing the D in FDA and not the F.
It'd make sense to move that responsibility out of the FDA and into the USDA to form a new food focused agency. It'd also make sense to regulate supplements, but there's a lot of monied interests that don't want more/better oversight so good luck seeing that happen.
At a minimum, consumers should be reasonably confident that what's on the label is in the package. That's not really true for supplements.
> We do this for meet and it's done wonders for the quality of products that fall under the USDA.
Sometimes typos are just fun. Could you imagine if everyone of your meetings had to follow strict FDA guidelines? Not sure if that would improve or worsen the typical meeting experience. Maybe a chart on the meeting invite like calories/sugars/etc that would indicate the type of meeting. If the sugars are too high, it will be one of those meetings where everything is super positive and sickening to sit through. A high protein value could indicate there will be actual useful information in the meeting.
That's like saying that the customers and shareholders of a given company are sufficient because they can sue, and therefore financial audits of the company are unnecessary.
The solution doesn't have to be a heavyweight centralized agency, either. Simply requiring periodic tests by an independent, licensed third party (just like financial auditors) should be sufficient.