| I don't believe this can or does apply to a farmer's roadside stands. If so I am amazed.
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Posted on 01/01/2004 6:54:27 AM PST by Valin
A few years ago, my wife and young son, aetat. 2 and a half, visited some friends from England who were staying in Newport, Rhode Island. Soon after arriving, my wife pulled out a banana for our son. Before she could give it to him, our friend David exclaimed wonderingly about the fruit. She gave it to him and he held it aloft, gazing upon it as Hamlet gazed upon the skull of Yorick. "Our masters in Brussels," he said, "would not allow us to have such a banana." He then went on to explain how the food police of the European Union were enforcing all manner of rules and regulations promulgated by the appointed (that is, unelected) ministers of Europe's new bureaucracy. David told us how his family had been planting a certain type of potato for decades at their farm in Wales: no more. The EU ministers decreed that type of spud verboten. They had rules for hedges, lawns, sausages, and comestibles of every sort. It became a crime to sell a pound of . . . well, of anything: one had to adopt the metric system or go to jail. Bananas that deviated too much from the perpendicular were illegal. I am not sure what happened to bananas that were overly curvaceous: perhaps they were required to take Pilates.
It all seemed so . . . absurd. And so it was. Unless you were caught selling pound of beef or a bendy banana.
I had more or less forgotten this episode until my friend sent me an article from the December 19 issue of the London Times. The headline tells the tale:
Why is this banana legally curved instead of just crooked? Because it is the fruit of the finest judicial minds in Europe. Unfortunately, the article is available on-line only for a fee, but here is the gist: GOODBYE bendy bananas. Farewell curved cucumbers. So long chunky carrots. The European Union has finally triumphed in its quest to tame nature and keep unusually shaped fruit and vegetables off our shop shelves. The House of Lords yesterday ordered greengrocers across the country to obey every EU horticultural regulation passed over the past 30 years concerning fresh produce and conform to the myriad of rules covering size, length, colour and texture.
The law lords rejected the argument, put forward by the supermarket Asda, that a legal blunder in 1973 had made the EU laws unenforceable. Now greengrocers will have to ensure that under EU regulation 2257/94 their bananas are at least 13.97cm (5.5in) long and 2.69cm (1.06in) round and do not have "abnormal curvature", as set out in an eight-page directive drawn up in 1994.
The ban on bendy bananas was necessary, according to an EU Commission official at the time, to prevent them from being mistaken for a "bicycle wheel". Organic cucumbers will have to straighten up their act, as well. Any that curve more than 10mm per 10cm in length cannot be sold as a Class 1 product.
Peaches must not be less than 5.6cm in diameter between July and October, and Class 1 Victoria plums must measure at least 3.5cm across.
Carrots that are less than 1.9cm wide at the thick end are not allowed, except in baby varieties. Not unreasonably, however, red apples will be illegal if less than 25 per cent of the surface is red. Stephen Alambritis, from the Federation of Small Businesses, said that the ruling could ruin some retailers. "It is ridiculous to expect small shopkeepers to have to double check every single piece of fruit and vegetable before it goes on sale," he said.
"Small businesses have neither the manpower nor the resources to check something like that" -unlike the bigger supermarkets. They insisted that the regulations would make little difference to their working practices because they already adhered to all the necessary European directives.
(Excerpt) Read more at newcriterion.com ...
| I don't believe this can or does apply to a farmer's roadside stands. If so I am amazed.
|
DIRTY HARRY, Fruit Cop...
"Ah-ah, I know what you're thinking punk. You're thinking did I measure 6cm or only five? And to tell you the truth I've forgotten myself in all this excitement. But being this is a .44 Magnum - the most powerful micrometer in the world and will blow your produce clean off your shelfs, you've got to ask yourself a question--Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk!"
--Boot Hill
The Official Federal Peach Regulations, I kid you not.
Now that you mention it, it's about one snowball's worth. US regulation is -- no fooling -- measured in shelf-feet. 185,000 pages is about right for federal regulation of paper clips.
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It does in California. As a wayward youth, I was once busted by one of those Ag Police for selling apples and peaches at the side of the road just outside Tehachapi. I had made a deal with a local farmer to sell his stuff for half of the proceeds. My teenage entreprenurial adventure was crushed when this cop pulled out a "peach ring" and demonstrated that some of my peaches would go through it. For which he shut me down and gave me a ticket. That's how I know about this stuff; I learned it the hard way :)