Government Intervention At Work

For those of you who don't know me I work in the food industry. This means that I deal with OSHA, FDA, USDA, and other government acronyms. But something rather disturbing has occurred that truly scares me in a way that none of these agencies ever had. The state of Florida is buying U.S. Sugar for $1.7 billion.

The sugar industry in the US has been supported by government price fixing and import tariffs that keep US sugar costing more than double what it costs in the rest of the world. This has caused a few things to happen:

- It has cost American consumers over $1.8 billion a year.
- It has inspired the creation of High Fructose Corn Syrup as a cheap alternative though that now is also more expensive than sugar is in the rest of the world and less healthy as well.
- It has caused American made products that use sugar to be more costly to produce and sell, therefor making them less competitive in the world market.

The price of corn is going to skyrocket because of the government mandated ethanol program in addition to the floods that have occurred in the Midwest. Now we have Florida buying the largest US sugar company and dismantling it to grow the Everglades larger. This spells DOOM for companies like the one I work for that uses sugar and corn syrup and aren't large enough to be able to throw our weight around with our suppliers. What is the government thinking??