Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#111

Post by rayiner » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:38 PM UTC

AlexMuir wrote: post #52

HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others. In Europe we can barely stop people from selling horsemeat as beef. I'm not sure how effectively we are implementing any of these rules, and I'm sure a farmer who wishes to do so can flout them at will. One positive thing to come from the rise of supermarkets…

> HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others.

In every industry, the people within the industry think that "they're different" and because they're morally upstanding they don't need to be regulated, but all those other fuckers, well they need to be kept in line. On HN you see this very clearly with attitudes towards the tech sector versus the financial sector (meanwhile my non-tech friends wonder why Facebook and Google are allowed to basically stalk you through the internet).

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#112

Post by arrrg » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

jacoblyles wrote: post #103

arrrg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For context, you always have to keep in mind why those laws exist. What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented? Creating a common market, of course! For a common market to exist it is obviously not enough to open up the borders to people, labor, goods and capital. It is also necessary to have common rules and regulations for the goods a…

I wonder how on earth people got through life before we had the government protecting us from misshapen banananas.

Sigh. I feel like you didn’t quite understand the point I was making. I don’t think ridicule is in any way an appropriate response.

On a basic level this is not about regulation. It is, of course, in some way, but only a roundabout one. Regulation in EU countries already exists. National regulators have been regulating stuff here forever.

EU regulators very often do not wake up in the morning and think "What laws can I add today?”, they mostly think “How can I best unify those complex and already existing laws into one cohesive whole that makes some sense, taking into account the interests of all 27 member nations?”

Now, that’s a hard problem to solve, but it is very often not driven by any sort of desire to create more regulation. In fact, if you are a company operating EU-wide (or just a number of EU countries) the complexity of laws you have to adhere to may even go down with a unified EU law, even though the EU law may be more complex than any single law in any single EU member country.

It’s a messy process and it’s far from optimal, but I think it’s pretty much an EU wide consensus that the goal of the EU is not to abolish regulation in any kind of grande way. So unifying it is.

(It is, of course, also through that through now more and more unified laws the decision process on regulation now moved to the EU level. Where laws are already unified, decisions about future regulation are made on the EU level.)

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#113

Post by gadders » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:46 PM UTC

claudius wrote: post #106

gadders wrote: post #87

For this one: 4. Chlorine washes for poultry carcasses the EU is currently looking at implementing something similar using substances such as ozone in solution or steam.

With the difference that steam is not exactly as toxic as chlorine, and even ozone is likely to be less of a problem.

Yes, but that something needs to wash the chickens due to bacteria.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#114

Post by DanBC » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:51 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #48

jkldotio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the traditional Croatian wine Prosek being banned from sale because it sounds too similar to prosecco which was developed long after (and they are different types of wine).[1] Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-croatia-food-eu...

> Or the feta cheese I buy from Germany that can't call itself feta and that anyone in day to day conversation will refer to as feta. And that anybody that has eaten actual feta will tell you immediately it's a bad imitation (often with the wrong process and/or ingredients). (Same goes for any "feta" sold in American supermarkets, at least Kroger, Walmart etc that I know of (as in the US the point of origin protectio…

> They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though.

No, if the name is a protected name it can't appear on the label or any advertising. Champagne is from Champagne. There's no such thing as 'wine produced to the champagne method', even though some Cava (etc) are produced to that method.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#115

Post by Xylakant » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:53 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #101

Xylakant wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the feta cheese you buy as "feta" that tries to be and still isn't real feta is actually cow milk cheese. The taste and texture is different, so the product shouldn't be called feta. The fact that people colloquially refer to things by the wrong name shouldn't allow producers to mislead me by labeling things with the wrong name.

It's a big gray area for me. What if someone followed the traditional methods and ingredients of real feta, made the best feta cheese you ever tasted in your life, BUT it was not made in Greece. Should that be allowed to call itself feta? I am against monopolies generally, and this geographical indicator stuff around products that have existed for centuries (Champagne, Bordeaux, Bourbon, Parmesan, Chablis, etc) rubs…

Bad examples:

* Champagne is a sparkling wine made with a specific method from a specific kind of grapes grown on a specific soil in a specific climate. You can reproduce the method elsewhere and use the same grapes, but you can't reproduce the soil or the climate. Hence, the end-result is different. It's a sparkling wine and there are a lot of sparkling wines that are equal or better than a mediocre champagne, but they're still champagne.

* Bordeaux is nothing more than a regional specifier. It encompasses the climate and the soil found there. It neither indicates quality nor taste - though many people associate it with both due to some of the best wines being produced there. What would any consumer win if all of a sudden wine produced in Berlin could be labeled "Bordeaux" - the one person winning here would be the seller. Is that fair?

* Cheese is even harder. Roquefort derives much of its taste and character from the microclimate found in the caves around the town of Roquefort. Something similar is true for Parmesan: Each cheese labeled as parmesan must be made by a specific recipe and is checked by a local authority. So I guess you could make the same product and ship it to Parma and have it certified - but would that be worth it?

Neither of the words is a descriptive word such as "Diamond" or "Sugar". The descriptive words in your cases are "Sparkling Wine", "Red Wine", "Whisky", "Hard Cheese". It's a brand name, like iPhone is Apples particular type of smartphone and Nexus Googles type.

All in all: What would the consumers gain if all of a sudden all blue cheese was roquefort and all hard cheese parmesan, all red wine Bordeaux, all whisky Bourbon and all sparkling wine Champagne? Pretty much nothing.

(*) Sidenote: Wiener Schnitzel must be veal in germany. If it's made from pork it's "Schnitzel Wiener Art". Now, that's stupid.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#116

Post by jkldotio » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

claudius wrote: post #60

jkldotio wrote: post #6

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,…

> "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" Oh, look, a good definition in a legal document. Don’t people normally complain about ambiguous laws leaving interpretation open to the courts[0]? > Regulations over the official ingredients of jam So that consumers can buy jam everywhere in the…

>Oh, look, a good definition in a legal document. Don’t people normally complain about ambiguous laws leaving interpretation open to the courts

Yes you have a "good definition" in the law there, but what is the law for? It can't have been too important if they repealed it and some people deny its existence.

>Or are you just annoyed that this is measured in millimetres rather than imperial attolightfortnights or similarly ridiculous unit?

The anti-British sentiment in this thread is astounding (I use metric by the way).

The sausage name is shared across regions due to a historical legacy, people who have traditionally enjoyed it should not have language and culture taken from them for the purposes of profits. See my post above on the feta rule being historical and linguistic vandalism.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#117

Post by Xylakant » Wed, May 08, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

mietek wrote: post #65

rmc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

battles over who has the right to make certain types of sausages What do you mean? There are people in England who think that the EU is going to ban British Sausages being called "sausages", forcing them to be called "emulsified high-fat offal tube". It was actually a joke from the political satire show "Yes, Minister" from 1984 (watch the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeDZtx3wUw ). There are a lot of eu…

In all honesty, British sausage probably should be renamed.

Most of all, all "german sausages" sold in britain show how much the brits still hate us krauts. Each and every one is an insult to every living german - and probably to the dead as well.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#118

Post by kintamanimatt » Wed, May 08, 2013, 6:02 PM UTC

SeanDav wrote: post #107

In Europe many of the laws tend to try to follow good moral principles. In the USA it would likely be the same if Big Business didn't have such a massive influence on law making.

Business has its hand in the legislative process in Europe too. Europe's not some corruption-free idealistic utopia.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#119

Post by tsmarsh » Wed, May 08, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #66

Gmo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mad Cow Disease did not hit only the UK (France, for instance, was also significantly hit). But anyway, for this kind of regulations, it is definitely at the European level and it is quite likely MCD is the reason for it

UK was hit worst, but other european countries were affected as well. I was pretty young when that happened but I still remember the images of piles of cow carcasses being burned on the open field. The MCD was the reason to ban feeding animal proteins to cows. Before MCD it was common practice to feed ground animal (cow) bones and leftovers from the slaughterhouse to cows.

I did some work with a guy who was asked to figure out how much accelerant was needed to burn a pile of cows. I knew burning them was a last resort, I hadn't figured that it was actually hard to do.

Re: Food Practices Banned in Europe But Allowed in the US

#120

Post by takluyver » Wed, May 08, 2013, 6:11 PM UTC

X4 wrote: post #92

We need more advanced Gardens and 100% recycling of everything we use, the system must have a working circular flow. No Genetic engineering, or processing of our food. It took billions of years for the nature to create the foods that are perfect for us, we cannot create something better (in a few hundred years). I wish that someday the entire Human race on Earth will be as enlightened as the people in Star Trek.

> It took billions of years for the nature to create the foods that are perfect for us, we cannot create something better (in a few hundred years).

Nature has no such intention - in fact, in most cases, evolution favours inedibility. Even simple processing methods like leaching out toxins with water probably made our food much better.

Fruit has evolved to be edible, but it's hardly perfect for us - it's more like a sugary treat. Milk might be the only thing we consume which has evolved as a nutrient source for creatures like us.