You think the FDA is a benign bureaucracy? See here regarding its massive destruction of American lives via its regulations on producers of Covid vaccines.
But the FDA’s dictates disrupt and destroy more than the production and distribution of vaccines. They also ensure that catsup makers use the “correct” amount of lemon juice in their sauce, that pie makers use the “correct” number of cherries, and basically that everyone does everything “correctly.”
From the Wall Street Journal:
The FDA requires ketchup to have a pH of 4.2±0.2 and lemon juice “may be used in quantities no greater than necessary to adjust the pH.” The consistency must also be such “that its flow is not more than 14 centimeters in 30 seconds at 20 °C.”
As for French salad dressing, they require: that it “be made of oil, ‘acidifying ingredients’ such as vinegar or lemon juice with vegetable oil constituting 35% by weight, though it need not include tomato paste.”
As for cherry pie:
“The fruit content of the pie is such that the weight of the washed and drained cherry content is not less than 25 percent of the weight of the pie,” FDA stipulates, and “not more than 15 percent by count of the cherries in the pie [may be] blemished with scab, hail injury, discoloration, scar tissue, or other abnormality. A cherry showing skin discoloration (other than scald) having an aggregate area exceeding that of a circle nine thirty-seconds of an inch in diameter is considered to be blemished. A cherry showing discoloration of any area but extending into the fruit tissue is also considered to be blemished.”
It goes on. Won’t you sleep better tonight knowing that these ever-vigilant, petty bureaucrats are protecting us and working to keep us safe and secure?!