So this suggests that the samples submitted to the FDA for testing were not representative of ordinary food. This reminds me of the ongoing Tetra Tech/Hunter's Point scandal [1], where the US Navy paid $300M to a contractor to clean up a development site. The contractor was required to submit samples from the site to prove they had cleaned it up. Instead, they just pulled soil from known clean places and submitted fo…
Most of the world runs of on good faith and best intentions, without it everything would break down. This goes for taxes, healthcare, insurance, checks, postal mail, traffic code, currency, etc. This also holds for an alarming number of electronic systems such as the phone network, and many ISP network configurations. While it's tempting to say no trust should be required, that's very expensive, like bitcoin. For sys…
I also don't think our only alternatives are "trust these companies to self-monitor", or blockchain.
I'm thinking about 2 kinds of solutions: 1) technical solutions which would improve the current chain-of-custody tracking (this could involve blockchain, but it doesn't have to). 2) policy solutions which might involve something like "less frequent, but more rigorous testing, with stronger penalties".
And I'm confused by your statement "Requiring submission of soil samples is rather expensive, and fairly strong control, because cheating is a very deliberate act." - but what these instances prove is that corporations will cheat anyway.