Nobody wants to deal with salmonella poisoning. Not you, not me, and certainly not the pork industry. Companies know that if their meat is contaminated with the disease-causing bacteria, they might sicken or even kill people—and thus get sued. So it’s in their best interest to keep everything clean.

That is the essence of the Trump administration’s argument for getting rid of about 40 percent of federal pork inspectors. By next month, according to The Washington Post, the pork plants themselves will be in charge of “identifying and removing live diseased hogs when they arrive at the plants”—as opposed to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which is responsible for ensuring that “everyone’s food is safe.”

News of the administration’s decision prompted comparisons to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and allusions to a fox guarding a hen house. Several pundits and journalists suggested Americans protest by keeping kosher—or, at least, reconsidering their next BLT. That’s all well and good, but Trump’s desire to let industries regulate their own safety doesn’t begin and end with the pork industry. Salmonella and E. coli are one thing. Nuclear explosions, plane crashes, and offshore oil spills are another entirely.

Republicans have been waging a four-decade war on government regulation, starting with the Reagan administration. The complaint, then as now, is that regulations are often excessive and financially punitive, stunting private companies’ growth and putting them at a disadvantage against foreign competition. But most Republicans admit that some regulation is necessary. The White House Council of Economic advisers, a 2017 paper on “The Growth Potential of Deregulation,” acknowledged that “society is better off with regulations that prevent toxic waste dumping, outlaw child labor, and protect endangered species.”

But in many cases, Republicans don’t see why the government itself has to be the regulator. Why should taxpayers pay for federal inspectors to badger businesses when the businesses themselves have an economic incentive not to threaten public health and safety?