> Licensure is a key feature so you prohibit people from making fake therapeutic claims or quackery.
Here in Canada, diary farmers need to be licensed to sell dairy products, as do poultry producers (chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.)
Not because anyone is worried about someone selling fake milk or trying to claim ducks are chicken (quackery, get it?). If they were, they'd be equally worried about farmers producing other kinds of food, whom we do not require licensing from. Rather, the story behind it is much simpler: The government at one point found it important to disallow competition to give the people operating in these markets an advantage to help them remain viable, for similar reasons as to why the US has provided farm subsidies over the years.
Anyway, the point being that regulation does not necessarily legitimize a profession. It may simply be an indictor of what interests lobbied hard enough to get economic protection.
I dont doubt that regulation enables regulatory capture, but what if assholes started selling dairy products that weren't up to sanitary code ? Say, like, a food truck. One day it's there, one day they're gone (conveniently after selling 50gal of tainted milk that sickens dozens). what do you do about that ?
Here in Canada, diary farmers need to be licensed to sell dairy products, as do poultry producers (chicken, turkey, eggs, etc.)
Not because anyone is worried about someone selling fake milk or trying to claim ducks are chicken (quackery, get it?). If they were, they'd be equally worried about farmers producing other kinds of food, whom we do not require licensing from. Rather, the story behind it is much simpler: The government at one point found it important to disallow competition to give the people operating in these markets an advantage to help them remain viable, for similar reasons as to why the US has provided farm subsidies over the years.
Anyway, the point being that regulation does not necessarily legitimize a profession. It may simply be an indictor of what interests lobbied hard enough to get economic protection.