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Some fruits of the EU's labours

Wednesday, 12th November 2008

It's the end of an era. No longer can we have a bitter laugh at the EU's expense over its ridiculous regulations covering the sale of curvy cucumbers, forked carrots and straight bananas.

The Commission has decided to scrap 26 sets of rules governing such things as the skins on onions and other vegetables and fruits – things its propagandists have claimed for years only really existed in the minds of British newspaper headline writers.

In ditching the regulations, the EU insisted that it had been the food retailers rather than the bureaucrats who had wanted them in the first place, a claim that sits rather uncomfortably alongside the recent "Save our Ugly Fruit and Veg" campaign begun by the Sainsbury's supermarket chain.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP says: "It's all rather odd to announce that you're abolishing what you insist never existed. However, the real problem is that it's much too small an effort. There are some 4,000 regulations, directives and rules that are imposed upon us each year. Losing 26 of them isn't going to stop the juggernaut now, is it?"

On the Commission's claim that trade groups had demanded the rules in the first place, Mr Farage pointed out that when retailers and growers got together and decided what would be a Grade I vegetable, what a Grade II and so on, the important point is that these were voluntary agreements, worked out between the participants in the market.

"When the EU decided to act this was not good enough. That people could happily operate without the intervention of bureaucrats simply could not be accepted. So these rules were made part of the criminal law.

"Yes, the selling of an abnormally curved banana was (and will be until July) a criminal offence punishable by up to six months in prison and/or a £5,000 fine. That you have agreed standards about the quality of vegetables is fine, that it's a criminal offence to breach them is not."

Mr Farage added: "However, all is not lost for those who appreciate the absurdity of the way the EU tries to run a continent.

"Under the 'Jams, jellies, marmalades and sweet chestnut purées' regulations it will still be true that carrots are to be defined as fruits and that while one may add the leaves of Pelargonium odoratissimum to jam, extra jam, jelly and extra jelly made from quinces, it will remain a criminal offence to add them to jam, extra jam, jelly and even extra jelly made from the closely related apples or pears.

"Which, I'm sure we will all agree, means that we can sleep safer in our beds at night."

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