The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the Consumer Federation of America want bar codes placed on foods to make it easier for the Food and Drug Administration to better detect and control instances of food poisoning. But while expensive government programs are easy to prescribe, it would be the American consumer and small business owner who would be forced to foot the bill.

Concerned Americans should ask three simple questions: Who would pay for the new system when it was working well? Who would compensate Americans harmed by the system when it worked poorly? Why does the government need to intervene at all?

In early June, the FDA issued a warning to consumers not to eat many types of fresh tomatoes, as they were under investigation for a connection with salmonella outbreaks in several states. The American consumer and many businesses related to the growing and distribution of tomatoes suffered substantial losses, while the FDA has yet to find conclusively that tomatoes are actually the source of the salmonella outbreaks.

Tomatoes are big business. In 2007, the crop value was $1.3 billion; imports approached $1 billion. Food processors and wholesale networks package tomatoes into products worth tens of billions of dollars. Some processors specializing in tomato products, such as Campbell’s Soup, are publicly traded companies. Retail outlets and restaurants, which sell tomatoes and tomato products directly to consumers, lost in excess of $100 million in just the first few weeks of the investigation.

Outbreaks of food poisoning are sadly not uncommon, but in a country of more than 300 million people with high public health standards, we measure food poisoning outbreaks in the dozens. The current salmonella outbreak is large but still measures fewer than 1,000 recorded cases.

Tomatoes alone have been the suspected source of more than a dozen food poisoning incidents in the past 20 years, but none has received the publicity and notoriety of the current tomato scare. Practically every type of meat and many vegetables have fallen under suspicion and scrutiny related to food poisoning. Those suspicions, when inaccurately cast, inflict substantial harms on businesses and consumers alike.

Government investigators have been able to track food poisoning with startling accuracy. In the 2006 investigation into an E. coli outbreak in spinach, investigators were able to trace it back to the original field. The salmonella outbreak this year is more elusive.

Government officials, including those at the FDA, must carefully balance the public’s need to know immediately about possible food poisoning with the potential harm created by government allegations that may ultimately prove wrong. Usually, the FDA has struck a reasonable balance in notifying the public, but it occasionally also makes mistakes.

Some observers believe that an omniscient government can solve any problem. When our government fails to solve a problem, as it has with the salmonella outbreak, more money for the government is all too often the reflexive solution.

But spending untold dollars to track every tomato — and presumably every grain of rice as well — in America is investing as much in hope as omniscience. More information three years from now will not solve this year’s salmonella outbreak, and it may not even solve every salmonella outbreak that year. There will also be the unsolved problem of who will compensate tomato farmers and distributors for crop losses this year. For farmers whose crop is without defect despite federal pronouncements, the general answer is they will get no compensation, certainly not from the federal government.

Americans must ask whether the incremental value of adding more government to solve food-poisoning problems is worth the substantial cost. For more than two centuries, businesses in the food sector have served the public well without federal micromanagement. Businesses with unexplained incidents of food poisoning do not stay in business. Ultimately, the American consumer rewards and punishes businesses far better than a government agency can.