Sådan är kapitalismen…

In the August issue of VI is an article by Elke Cronenberg about lobbyists in Brussels. It doesn't go all that far, finding that the connections between lobbyists and public servants are carefully kept opaque. Yet there is a very illuminating comment by Lena Ek^*, MEP, who apparently has been talked into voting for relaxing the European substance testing legislation (REACH):

What do you say to a lone manufacturer of something as harmless as artificial raspberry flavouring? That she must run all the tests that are proposed now. How could she afford that? For a raspberry flavour?

Weeell… How do we know it is harmless unless it has been tested? (And we might of course not know even then, due to limitations in the testing procedure.)

As if prompted, Effect Measure writes about “popcorn worker's lung” (followup). Something as harmless as artificial butter flavouring destroys the lungs…

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^*See Lena Ek's own blogging on the matter.