Bunch of clucks
    Government taxes you to pay for enforcement of rules that make your food taste worse and cost more. Rules punishing small-business enterprise that politicians profess to encourage, hurting the farmers they profess to defend, and promoting the very cruelty to creatures that they profess to deplore.
    Say you want to sell apple pies at a church basement fund-raiser, hot pasta dishes from a market stall or home-made desserts from an ice cream cart. For finest quality you want the freshest ingredients, right? For instance, the freshest fresh eggs you can get. So you find a reliable farmer and get your supplies daily direct from the hens.
    Nope, says a food inspector. You have to use government-inspected eggs. That means you have to deal with a third-party supplier who can afford to pay for the time-consuming inspection process (and will of course pass the cost on to you).
    But, you say, that will put my own prices up, and the eggs won't be as fresh by the time they get to me and into the food. My farmer can sell eggs at the farm gate to anyone who drives up. Why not to me?
    Sure, people can buy farm eggs to take home and eat themselves, the inspector says, but you can't put those eggs in food you're selling to others. You have to use inspected eggs.
    But, you say, most of your inspected eggs come from places where the hens spend their whole lives locked into nesting boxes, being fed chemicals to make them lay more. It's barbaric. Who knows whether anything from those Frankenfowl is even safe to eat?
     Trust me, the inspector says. I'm with the government.