Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

Is there a good way to buy only products that avoid use of these chemicals?

Live in Europe?

/me rins

The flipside of this are things like the banana regulation, more commonly known as Commission Regulation (EC) No 2257/94.[1] I believe it's now rescinded under ridicule but there are people who try to deny it even existed. It's well worth reading in full on eur-lex for riveting prose like "the measurement, in millimetres, of the thickness of a transverse section of the fruit between the lateral faces and the middle, perpendicularly to the longitudinal axis".[2]

Regulations over the official ingredients of jam, battles over who has the right to make certain types of sausages, the list goes on. It's harder for legal systems other than the common law because of the way they work but I'm of the opinion that we should at least trial putting a word count limit on the total body of law and regulation.

A more depressing tale of regulatory woe, given the rocketing suicides and unemployment in Greece, is that of the bookstore/café that can't sell coffee and frequently can't sell books.[3]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_(EC)_No_2...

[2]http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLE...

[3]last three paragraphs http://economistmeg.com/2012/02/27/note-from-athens-feeling-...

A reasonably informative article.

It must pain HNers in US that if they perceive these items as problems then they have little access to tasty unpasteurized cheeses which would help ease the blows.

http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/consumers/ucm079516....

I'm from Oz originally, and they unfortunately ban unpasteurized cheese too.

The most sensible European regulations of those listed in the article kindly submitted here are

"What Europe did: Banned all forms of animal protein, including chicken litter, in cow feed in 2001."

and

"What Europe did: In the EU, all antibiotics used in human medicines are banned on farms—and no antibiotics can be used on farms for 'non-medical purposes,' i.e., growth promotion."

I'd like to see the United States follow that lead immediately, and I write this as a man who has several uncles and cousins who are farmers, including some who raise cattle. It makes sense to me to have lines of defense against transmission of animal-infecting, and especially antibiotic-resistant-animal-infecting, microbes to human beings, by controlling what animals raised as lifestock eat and how they are treated with veterinary medicines.

For the other regulatory practices mentioned in the article, especially washing chicken carcasses, I'd like to see more detailed evidence of the safety trade-offs involved in the practices of the United States and of Europe. I'm less sure on some of the other issues that science actually supports the European practice.