> "...the agency is re-examining current regulations dictating that frozen cherry pies are required to be at least 25 percent cherries by weight..."
The tone of the article seems to suggest that we should sympathetic to this deregulation but, if so, it's backfired since the implications are that cherry pies will be allowed to be arbitrarily less than 25% cherries by weight, presumably to save on costs. That doesn't seem like a good thing at all.
They very well will not. I can currently go to any supermarket and pick up a whole range of horrible (but cheap) products. The free market isn't magic.
True. There are always people who are willing to buy products that others don't like. However, you can probably find a premium cherry pie in that supermarket also. I'm sure that consumers can tell the difference between a cherry pie and a cherry flavored pie without packaging requirements.
> The free market isn't magic.
It is what it is. I used to work in a supermarket, and when a product's sales dropped, we removed that product from the shelves. This usually happened after we brought in some better, competing products. That was the free market magic.
That's the lobby part of my comment. The only reason I can think the federal govt would be at all interested in tricking people into accepting fewer cherries in their cherry pie is if it is directly connected to campaign (and other) funding ventures.
Except this is a regulation that was in place prior that businesses had to obey.
Why did the government require it? Why couldn't the business claim "Real Cherry Pie with 25% real cherries" on their product and let the consumer differentiate how many cherries they wanted in their pies? Sounds like bureaucracy that felt that consumers couldn't figure it out.
Edit: And, I don't see this as the government trying to trick consumers. I see this as the government getting out of the pissing match between pie makers. Let consumer product watch groups rate the cherry content of pies, I say.
True. I don't disagree - they shouldn't have been in the business in the first place. Consumers themselves have the (unexercised?) ability to shun fake or filler-laden foods.
Given how people seem to be fine about eating fake blueberry muffins for a "healthy" breakfast substitute, we can expect pretty much the same for cherry pies. They could shun it. They don't.
It really isn't the federal govt's job to insist on real food products when people are perfectly happy eating junk.
> "...the agency is re-examining current regulations dictating that frozen cherry pies are required to be at least 25 percent cherries by weight..."
The tone of the article seems to suggest that we should sympathetic to this deregulation but, if so, it's backfired since the implications are that cherry pies will be allowed to be arbitrarily less than 25% cherries by weight, presumably to save on costs. That doesn't seem like a good thing at all.