An April 16, 2004 article by Arnold Kling on regulation notes an article from Reason magazine by ACSH's Todd Seavey:
At some point, a government authority needs to enter the picture. It is not necessarily the case that government must inspect meat plants. However, government must have some enforcement power to ensure that meat labels are honest. As Todd Seavey wrote for Reason about the Food and Drug Administration, "There is no avoiding some sort of legal constraint on food and drug sales, unless we want a modern version of the 19th-century free-for-all that poured mislabeled opium and disguised wood chips down the gullets of the ignorant. That's not freedom. That's fraud."
All that having been said, I believe that it is good to have a strong presumption in favor of individual liberty and for keeping regulation to a minimum. In the case of the FDA, there may be a middle ground between 19th-century lawlessness and contemporary regulation.
