4 ms·

Rules-lawyering at its finest. This kind of reminds me of the “is a jaffa cake a biscuit” legal fight, which mattered a great deal for VAT purposes.

sonofgod 7y ago
See also -- Marvel's legal team: "The X-Men aren't really people." https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-ruled-marvels-x-men-arent-humans https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-r...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Or a classic alt.sex.stories signature: "All creatures in this story live in a solar system where one year is equal to 1,000 Earth years."
mamon 7y ago
There are some cases of that absurdity within EU: - snails are considered "landborne fish", so that French farmers can receive EU grants for breeding them, from the money pool set aside for fishermen. - there's a maximum allowed curvative of a banana, so that only bananas coming from former French colonies in Africa are allowed to be sold in the EU (South American banana species are more curved) - carrot is considered a fruit, so that Portugese producers of carrot jam can sell it outside the Portugal (EU requries that jam must be made of fruit). - According to EU officials, there's no proof that drinking water helps you hydrate, so producers of bottled water are not allowed to claim that in the advertisement, or on the labels.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  Have you fact-checked those claims? In my experience, these "stupid EU" stories are more often false than not. The banana myth is a classic, and is untrue. There are standards for grading bananas, but no ban on selling bananas of the "wrong" curvature. I couldn't find a source for the snail story, except a single, fairly sketchy article referencing Polish news stories. I'd take it with a grain of salt. The carrot/fruit issue apparently comes from regulation concerning what jams, spreads etc. can be made of. The directive in question outlines a number of different foodstuffs you can make jams out of, including ginger and, of course, berries. Neither of these are fruits either. The directive does not claim they are. I didn't look up the water claim. That one sounds fairly believable to me as medical claims are usually pretty heavily regulated, but I wouldn't care to bet on it being true, either.
  - mamon 7y ago
    RE: snails, here's the official document listing them as "fishery product": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32010R0086 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32...
    - dcminter 7y ago
      "the products excluded from the definition of fishery products" i.e. excluding any snails other than sea snails.
- dmckeon 7y ago
  Another sets of examples is that of Christian missionaries in foreign lands and remote monasteries trying to get permission to stretch the rules about fasting days to accommodate local wildlife. Beavers and capybara spend much of their time in and near water - can they be considered fish? How about turtles? Mollusks? How about a species of bird thought (at the time) to develop from a shellfish? Were land-going crabs meat, or seafood? Rules-lawyering for hungry holy men, trying to comply with strictures applied from a distance.

sonofgod 7y ago

See also -- Marvel's legal team: "The X-Men aren't really people." https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-ruled-marvels-x-men-arent-humans https://mentalfloss.com/article/92007/why-us-federal-court-r...

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Or a classic alt.sex.stories signature: "All creatures in this story live in a solar system where one year is equal to 1,000 Earth years."

mamon 7y ago

There are some cases of that absurdity within EU: - snails are considered "landborne fish", so that French farmers can receive EU grants for breeding them, from the money pool set aside for fishermen. - there's a maximum allowed curvative of a banana, so that only bananas coming from former French colonies in Africa are allowed to be sold in the EU (South American banana species are more curved) - carrot is considered a fruit, so that Portugese producers of carrot jam can sell it outside the Portugal (EU requries that jam must be made of fruit). - According to EU officials, there's no proof that drinking water helps you hydrate, so producers of bottled water are not allowed to claim that in the advertisement, or on the labels.

rebuilder 7y ago
Have you fact-checked those claims? In my experience, these "stupid EU" stories are more often false than not. The banana myth is a classic, and is untrue. There are standards for grading bananas, but no ban on selling bananas of the "wrong" curvature. I couldn't find a source for the snail story, except a single, fairly sketchy article referencing Polish news stories. I'd take it with a grain of salt. The carrot/fruit issue apparently comes from regulation concerning what jams, spreads etc. can be made of. The directive in question outlines a number of different foodstuffs you can make jams out of, including ginger and, of course, berries. Neither of these are fruits either. The directive does not claim they are. I didn't look up the water claim. That one sounds fairly believable to me as medical claims are usually pretty heavily regulated, but I wouldn't care to bet on it being true, either.
- mamon 7y ago
  RE: snails, here's the official document listing them as "fishery product": https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32010R0086 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex:32...
  - dcminter 7y ago
    "the products excluded from the definition of fishery products" i.e. excluding any snails other than sea snails.
dmckeon 7y ago
Another sets of examples is that of Christian missionaries in foreign lands and remote monasteries trying to get permission to stretch the rules about fasting days to accommodate local wildlife. Beavers and capybara spend much of their time in and near water - can they be considered fish? How about turtles? Mollusks? How about a species of bird thought (at the time) to develop from a shellfish? Were land-going crabs meat, or seafood? Rules-lawyering for hungry holy men, trying to comply with strictures applied from a distance.