For most of the twentieth century, consumers bought products and trusted that someone, somewhere, had verified they were safe. Regulatory bodies existed. Standards were published. The assumption was that if something sat on a supermarket shelf, it had passed through enough checkpoints to be considered acceptable. That implicit contract began to fracture sometime in the early 2010s — and it has not recovered since. A generation of consumers emerged that no longer trusted the checkpoint system, preferring instead to run their own inspections. The consequences of that shift are still unfolding across virtually every product category imaginable.

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