Every so often I come across letters to the editor of the Oregonian that complain about government regulations on business and how those regulations are stifling. Often letter writers claim that in the end, consumers have to pay more for products and services due to the increased expense of regulations. I won’t argue with this claim, but as a business owner I take issue with the way the anti-regulators frame the argument.

My business is in one of the most highly regulated industries in this country: food. Having been in this industry for over eight years I’ve learned a lot, and one thing is for certain, if anything should be regulated it’s the food we buy and eat because, as so many of us now know, our lives and health depend on it. Our businesses also depend on it.

When I first started my business I had the very unfortunate experience of contracting with a company that was not following government regulations. It wasn’t long before I found out. To make a long story short, my contractors were making a product for me that was exploding on grocery store shelves. I recieved e-mails and calls from horrified customers who opened up jars that turned into lava flows.

Four thousand dollars later and lost, I filed a small claim against the company and called the health department. They were already on the health department’s hit list, but unbeknownst to me at the time, the company had been moving around to different facilities and changing their company name in the past years in order to evade the health inspectors. Eventually the company was shut down, but not after harming many small start-ups like mine and existing businesses who had made the fateful mistake of switching contractors.

Other businesses that had gone out of business or had taken a hard hit due to the negligence of the above mentioned contractors began calling me and relaying their stories. Several owners had alerted the health department. Each and every one of us felt demoralized because we all thought we had failed at being savvy enough to see the problems. Even a well established Oregon food company had been duped by these people, and the hit they took made mine look like peanuts.

For me it wasn’t just about the money, it was the customers who despite my best efforts to remedy their bad experience would probably never buy my products again. Not a good start for a start-up. But then again I was so small, the impact was minimal. I insisted to those who advised me to fold my business that I could turn things around, especially if I could find a good contractor who followed the rules. I did, and my business has been growing ever since.

My current contractors consistently get high marks from the government health inspectors, which gives me enormous confidence in what I send off to the grocery stores you shop at. And, yes, there is an extra cost in having to follow strict regulations, but aren’t you willing to pay for it? I am, and so is my business.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 21st, 2006 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.