Reply #7: There is no corresponding market force to keep them from doing it. [View All]

[originalpckelly]

Obviously they thought they could get away with it, without losing money. Somehow these companies must be regulated by the market to produce high quality goods. Reputation here seems important. Perhaps the complex relationships between distributors and actual manufacturers is too complex for the idea of corporate reputation to self-regulate their quality.

In other words, people stop buying crap they have heard kills other people, it's a matter of reputation. But when there is another company supplying ingredients, in a large and complex supply chain, the same regulation that comes from harm to one's reputation is non-existent for large businesses.

It's also obvious that government regulation is flawed in that it requires regulators not to be bought off by the companies they regulate, which is what's been going on here. It's called regulatory capture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture