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At the beginning of the article I was thinking surely there are more important things to write about, but it dives down a pretty absurd rabbit hole. Especially

At the beginning of the article I was thinking surely there are more important things to write about, but it dives down a pretty absurd rabbit hole. Especially funny is when the pasta spokesperson begins commiserating that the reporter is making more work for them.

Scoundreller 6y ago
It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a European dealer and have it shipped over. Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? Yeah yeah, everyone can point to an example where their regulatory agency's anxieties/delays/negligence prevented some issue, but fail to consider the impacts of all of their other delays/rejections.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- freeone3000 6y ago
  There are various regulatory trade-offs between safety and cost of compliance. For instance: Cars sold as new in Canada require daytime running lights and yellow rear turn signals, due to extended periods of low visibility. While the running lights are a requirement in Sweden, they aren't in Poland or many other European countries. There's been some effort on standardizing between US and Canada since 2016, which would allow for a North American market car to solely use yellow turn signals, but progress is slow. Which is why we probably won't see much progress in harmonizing bigger regulations. Whose regulation gets to win? This has been a five-year fight over the color of a piece of plastic. Everyone even wants to agree - the automotive industry would love a worldwide standard to reduce specialized part count, rulemakers would love to agree in order to increase the shared market size (so everyone gets the same cars), but the actual standard to be put into place calls into conflict the exact safety versus cost thresholds each government has set. Imagine if there's actual conflict.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    > over the color of a piece of plastic It isn't even about the colour (which is trivial to control with software and 8 extra cents in LEDs), but about the colour of the plastic. That's the dumb thing that proves it's about protectionism. Same with DRL: it's controllable in software. Meanwhile, Canada lets you import any >17 year old hunk of junk from anywhere and that's somehow safe and okay (because it doesn't harm new car sales so directly, yet still much more fatal to occupants).
    - buran77 6y ago
      > Meanwhile, Canada lets you import There are far more important reasons to do this than protectionism and it's disingenuous to skip them and jump straight to protectionism. Banning old cars would harm the parts of the population which can't afford brand new cars (that's a huge chunk) and guarantees that every time regulation demands something new everyone has to buy a new car. On the other hand not mandating new safety tech harms everyone in general and guarantees that cars new and old will forever be much worse than they need to be since manufacturers won't be in a hurry to spend more money on tech. Keep in mind that a car with DRL and ABS will be an "old car" a few years from now. 10+ year old cars have ABS today because at some point it was mandated on all new cars. It's a reasonable compromise to let people buy and use the old cars as they are (or anything that uses old, outdated tech - lead based solder in electronics?) but demand that new ones constantly integrate new tech.
      - Scoundreller 6y ago
        From what I’ve seen, the >17yr old imports aren’t to save money, but your chance to finally drive something exotic that wasn’t (or wouldn’t) be approved for sale here. E.g. RHD, Kei cars, Nissan Skylines
        tracker1 6y ago
        As someone passively enthusiast about cars, I think that's in general a good thing. People buying classic/old cars generally know it's not going to have current safety regulations, but may still appreciate it and take the risks. I'm font on retro/rust-mods where they're updated with modern engines, controls, etc... others prefer completely stock/original as possible. In the end, it's not so different from being able to maintain a listed building in England or other heritage or historical works, other than it rolls down the roads.
- jldugger 6y ago
  > It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? America has a longstanding tradition of food fortification. Niacin is also used to supplement US diets featuring a corn staple -- corn's niacin is not bioavailable without additional processing traditional to Mesoamerican cultures. Probably more recognized today is iodized salt, which is responsible for perhaps a decade's worth of the Flynn effect in the US. In the case of flour, Europe is lagging behind: https://www.ffinetwork.org/europe https://www.ffinetwork.org/europe. Apparently Denmark went the extra step of banning enriched / fortified foods. You could probably argue that regional diets will naturally vary and that something like iodine supplements aren't required for Italians when they have ready access to seafood that Oklahomans don't. But since I'm pretty sure these enrichments aren't harmful to those who do have access, I imagine some of the divide is simply protectionism -- protecting your local markets and local manufacturers from cheaper American brands.
  - ljf 6y ago
    I've no idea how much Niacin is added in America, but you can have too much. Since we don't eat much corn here in Europe, packing food unnecessarily full of this supplement could be dangerous to health: Niacin Toxicity Symptoms of toxicity include: Flushing of the skin, primarily on the face, arms, and chest *This side effect may occur at doses as low as 30 mg/day. Itching. Nausea. Vomiting.
    - jldugger 6y ago
      I'm really not sure where that citation is coming from. It's a Google web answer but the source has no citation. Wikipedia lists a textbook, rather than anything from NCBI, and I'm too lazy to dig further. A corn torilla or slice of bread in the US typically has 1-2 mg of niacin, and a daily recommendation of around 16mg. 3 oz (85 grams) of "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of the stuff[1], and average adults get about 30mg/day. Best I can tell this is about nicotinic acid specifically, and might be IV rather than ingestion, which is very much an apples and oranges situation. 1: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Niacin-HealthProfessional/
- pjc50 6y ago
  Sometimes who gets to make the rules is far more important than what the rules are.
  - bookofjoe 6y ago
    This is profound.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Cars of the same model made for different markets have varying safety features. US destination Japanese cars have better crash protection than those made for their domestic market.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  In this particular case it's not even a matter of safety: pasta with <13 mg/lb of iron is no more or less safe than pasta with >13 mg/lb, and as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans). If anything, mandatory enrichment seems like an arbitrary trade barrier imposed on the US side to protect what the article calls "Big Pasta" from foreign interlopers.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    > as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans) "Iron deficiency isn't an issue, probably because there's lots of enriched foods, so let's stop enriching food!" I think regulatory analysis requires a little more thought than that.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      The fact that European pasta isn't enriched and we don't have iron deficiency issues gives a good hint, so.
      - akiselev 6y ago
        Different regions have diets made up of different ingredients, which have different levels of various minerals. Humans don't all eat the exact same thing and they don't all exist in the same exact climate so regulations tend to be curated to their local constituents. Furthermore, in many European nations the pasta is enriched, mainly with fiber although plenty of other nutrients are added depending on the brand and market. European countries just don't have regulations regarding "enriched macaroni" labeling like the US, which is an interesting historical quirk but irrelevant to what's actually in the pasta. Popular brands like Barilla are almost certainly enriched with something - depending on the size of the market it might have been enriched to American standards just to minimize manufacturing fragmentation (i.e. Italy, a huge consumer of pasta and origin of many of the brands will have formulas dedicated to that market, while Norway will receive whatever other formula is closest to their requirements).
- mullingitover 6y ago
  > It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? We don't need to wonder! They explain it right in the article: protectionism. It's not really that surprising that a lot of regulations have nothing to do with protecting the consumer and are all about protecting the parties that really matter to governments: big domestic industries. > Around World War II, Carl explained, the established noodle industry (henceforth referred to as Big Pasta) was “upset” by the introduction of Nissin’s ramen noodles into the country, which were “completely out of spec” with what the United States then recognized as noodles — specifically because the ramen was being sold for a lower price and with what Carl called “lower standards” of nutrition. “They were really pressed,” said Carl. That’s when the “standards of identity” were created: Big Pasta made sure that all noodles had to meet certain specifications to be considered “enriched macaroni products” and sold in the United States.
  - sunpar 6y ago
    “Standards of Identity” are not in and of themselves a bad thing. If a product comes to market claiming to be one thing but it is not, it may damage the market for all other products. Imagine a tv manufacturer claiming to sell a HD tv that is not HD, for example. In this case, the pasta industry did not want their product confused with the new noodles coming from Nissin; this was back in the days when many Americans may not have readily known the difference between pasta noodles and ramen noodles, and wondered why they were paying more for pasta than they could for ramen. Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do. Alternatively, it might be the fact that the pasta company in question was selling buccatini at a lower price, a competitor did an analysis, and they found that this company was saving money by skirting regulation that everyone else is complying with. And they did the right thing by forcing the FDA to apply the rules evenly to all companies.
    - mullingitover 6y ago
      > Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do. Agreed. I'm not saying there's no rational underpinning to regulation, just that it's frequently gamed by bad actors, almost to the point that the original intent is forgotten.
- jsmith99 6y ago
  That's the importance of regulatory harmonisation. Eg your laptop charger is probably covered in 20 different indecipherable logos showing compliance with every countries regulators, all of whom have standards at least 99.9% identical. The EU has harmonised regulations internally in order to make completely free trade work, so a single 'CE' logo is enough to show compliance for the entire EU. Regulatory harmonisation is controversial though, especially here in UK. No matter that its usually boring stuff like agreeing fire retardant coatings on soft furnishings, the newspapers insisted this was a breach of sovereignty. Expect a new British safety standard (identical but with a different logo) to join the pack.
  - toyg 6y ago
    I’m really looking forward to a pile of reduced-safety standards from the people who gave us the Grenfell disaster...
  - rvba 6y ago
    Note that there is the CE symbol (confirmation of Europan standards) and there is also a very simila CE symbol that means "China Export". The second one does not have anything to do with European standards. It is deceptively similar.. guess why
    - conistonwater 6y ago
      Wikipedia says the European Commission says this is an urban legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export I mean I don't know anything about it, just wanted to point that out. But then this one https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H... says it's real, I'm confused. Edit: I'm going to go through every single device/cable I have at home and examine the font and the arrangement of the two letters now, the C and the E need to be on two circles that overlap by exactly the width of the lines.
      - gruez 6y ago
- fomine3 6y ago
  Regulation isn't made just by health/safety perspective, but includes cultural, social and others. For example, Katsuobushi is the core part of Japanese food but it seems that exporting to Europe is difficult due to EU regulation. Another example in Japan would be K-car. As a Japanese, I never want to give up Katuobushi for improving health. I suspect that maybe oppositely, European people also has food or culture that banned from other country . https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/ https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/
  - anilakar 6y ago
    The article you linked makes it rather clear that the reason for banning imports has nothing to do with culture but with the carcinogens in the product. The Spanish factory uses a safer smoking process.
  - neltnerb 6y ago
    Wasabi is impossible to get in the USA, my understanding was that this was because of Japan's rules rather than those if the USA. We just have horseradish with green food coloring in the USA.
    - splonk 6y ago
      It's not impossible, it's just expensive to import and difficult to store. Higher end sushi places would usually have it. Now there are at least two farms in the US producing it that I know of, one in Washington state, and another in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco, and there's even some retail distribution now in SF.
      - neltnerb 6y ago
        That is very exciting! My old karate instructor owned a sushi restaurant and I got the strong impression that the mob looked poorly on attempts to export. He may have been exaggerating.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    I think Germany and the Netherlands have some similar vehicles to the K-car, but not sure they are the same from a regulation point of view
- jbay808 6y ago
  It seems that regulations are often a little more lax on products produced domestically. Can we trust states with major pharmaceutical industries to regulate pharmaceuticals? Major car production centres to regulate emissions? Major chemicals companies to regulate chemicals? I'd be a little suspicious, living next to such a country, if they insist on my adopting the regulations they wrote, which of course their industries all successfully meet to the letter.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. It's true that they don't make much sense and that they often harm the consumer, but I vote in my regional politicians and in theory can vote them out if they impose standards I don't like. One of the problems with Europe was the perceived lack of democratic control coupled with the dishonesty from anti_EU campaigners about things like straight bananas.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    The problem is that unless the bad regulation is hurting everyone a lot the regulations will be around for 10-50yr after you vote them out.
- sircastor 6y ago
  I work for an automotive manufacturer that has a model that couldn’t be sold in the United States due to its lack of a steering column airbag (probably along with other items). It has led to an aggressive destruction of imported vehicles by customs officials and seizing of legal vehicles due to mistaken identity. I don’t care for this, but I understand it. Rarely do we hear about the lives that were saved thanks to the regulatory body doing its job.
- CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
  Because we don't have a world government so every government can do what they want. Even ignoring protectionism there are a billion different ways to make reasonable regulations and many of them will be incompatible in some ways. Countries working together on regulations is a thing, but it also does slow down things and takes a lot of effort. >Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? I don't see any way how that could work out any better than the current situation.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Aerospace goy pretty close, with EASA and the FAA accepting each others certification. Until the FAA blew the 737 MAX and everyone had to show how tough they are. And because the FAA did screw up.
    - woliveirajr 6y ago
      And in Brazil the certification caught the problem... Not accepting each other certification with blind eyes can be a good thing.
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Couldn't agree more! Even just conducting double checks on others certification would do a lot of good.
      - Scoundreller 6y ago
        I wonder how many Embraers pass Brazil certification but fail FAA/EASA.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  > Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? Global systems are inherently more fragile, no? More eyes on something is always a good thing, less likely to be corrupted by corporate interests, etc...
- ben_w 6y ago
  Different product, but eggs make an interesting example of why: Both USA and UK markets take steps to avoid salmonella. The method the USA requires the eggs to be refrigerated, the method the UK uses effectively requires that they are not (at least not until you get them home, once you start you can’t stop). https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why-the-u-s-chills-its-eggs-and-most-of-the-world-doesnt?t=1609237226579 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rvba 6y ago
  How is Boeing Max safe for Americans but it crashes elsewhere?
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    This was just luck. An aircraft with a special randomly-initiate-death-plunge function will crash somewhere first and somewhere else second. If the public is stupid enough to keep flying in it, eventually it will crash all over the place. In this case, the flying public decided that two horrible crashes was enough.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Look up the blancolirio channel on YouTube, specifically the Max episodes and you'll how close we came to crashing them here.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  As mentioned later in the article, the offending requirement likely isn’t a safety thing, but a 1940s era protectionist thing.
- estaseuropano 6y ago
  Different doesn't mean one is better or worse. You get objections to GMO food in Europe while in the US this doesn't even have to be labelled. Chocolate standards that mean most US chocolate cannot legally be called chocolate in Europe as it doesn't contain enough cocoa. Chicken has to be chlorine washed in the US before sale, a practice that is prohibited in Europe. Eggs in the US are washed before sale which makes it necessary to keep them in the fridge afterwards while in Europe eggs are nornally sold unwashed (in some countries (all EU?) It's even prohibited to wash them). Let's not even talk standards for wine and raw milk cheese, use of corn syrup, regional denominations, slaughter and animal welfare rules, ... Not easy to find a simple resolution to such strong differences in some sectors. Opposition to trade deals among Europeans usually stem from (1) fears of lower food standards (incl. animal welfare), (2) worries about slavery and labour exploitation and (3) worries about low environmental standars. I'm sure the US has similar recurring themes popping up.

Scoundreller 6y ago

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a European dealer and have it shipped over. Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? Yeah yeah, everyone can point to an example where their regulatory agency's anxieties/delays/negligence prevented some issue, but fail to consider the impacts of all of their other delays/rejections.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
freeone3000 6y ago
There are various regulatory trade-offs between safety and cost of compliance. For instance: Cars sold as new in Canada require daytime running lights and yellow rear turn signals, due to extended periods of low visibility. While the running lights are a requirement in Sweden, they aren't in Poland or many other European countries. There's been some effort on standardizing between US and Canada since 2016, which would allow for a North American market car to solely use yellow turn signals, but progress is slow. Which is why we probably won't see much progress in harmonizing bigger regulations. Whose regulation gets to win? This has been a five-year fight over the color of a piece of plastic. Everyone even wants to agree - the automotive industry would love a worldwide standard to reduce specialized part count, rulemakers would love to agree in order to increase the shared market size (so everyone gets the same cars), but the actual standard to be put into place calls into conflict the exact safety versus cost thresholds each government has set. Imagine if there's actual conflict.
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  > over the color of a piece of plastic It isn't even about the colour (which is trivial to control with software and 8 extra cents in LEDs), but about the colour of the plastic. That's the dumb thing that proves it's about protectionism. Same with DRL: it's controllable in software. Meanwhile, Canada lets you import any >17 year old hunk of junk from anywhere and that's somehow safe and okay (because it doesn't harm new car sales so directly, yet still much more fatal to occupants).
  - buran77 6y ago
    > Meanwhile, Canada lets you import There are far more important reasons to do this than protectionism and it's disingenuous to skip them and jump straight to protectionism. Banning old cars would harm the parts of the population which can't afford brand new cars (that's a huge chunk) and guarantees that every time regulation demands something new everyone has to buy a new car. On the other hand not mandating new safety tech harms everyone in general and guarantees that cars new and old will forever be much worse than they need to be since manufacturers won't be in a hurry to spend more money on tech. Keep in mind that a car with DRL and ABS will be an "old car" a few years from now. 10+ year old cars have ABS today because at some point it was mandated on all new cars. It's a reasonable compromise to let people buy and use the old cars as they are (or anything that uses old, outdated tech - lead based solder in electronics?) but demand that new ones constantly integrate new tech.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      From what I’ve seen, the >17yr old imports aren’t to save money, but your chance to finally drive something exotic that wasn’t (or wouldn’t) be approved for sale here. E.g. RHD, Kei cars, Nissan Skylines
      - tracker1 6y ago
        As someone passively enthusiast about cars, I think that's in general a good thing. People buying classic/old cars generally know it's not going to have current safety regulations, but may still appreciate it and take the risks. I'm font on retro/rust-mods where they're updated with modern engines, controls, etc... others prefer completely stock/original as possible. In the end, it's not so different from being able to maintain a listed building in England or other heritage or historical works, other than it rolls down the roads.
jldugger 6y ago
> It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? America has a longstanding tradition of food fortification. Niacin is also used to supplement US diets featuring a corn staple -- corn's niacin is not bioavailable without additional processing traditional to Mesoamerican cultures. Probably more recognized today is iodized salt, which is responsible for perhaps a decade's worth of the Flynn effect in the US. In the case of flour, Europe is lagging behind: https://www.ffinetwork.org/europe https://www.ffinetwork.org/europe. Apparently Denmark went the extra step of banning enriched / fortified foods. You could probably argue that regional diets will naturally vary and that something like iodine supplements aren't required for Italians when they have ready access to seafood that Oklahomans don't. But since I'm pretty sure these enrichments aren't harmful to those who do have access, I imagine some of the divide is simply protectionism -- protecting your local markets and local manufacturers from cheaper American brands.
- ljf 6y ago
  I've no idea how much Niacin is added in America, but you can have too much. Since we don't eat much corn here in Europe, packing food unnecessarily full of this supplement could be dangerous to health: Niacin Toxicity Symptoms of toxicity include: Flushing of the skin, primarily on the face, arms, and chest *This side effect may occur at doses as low as 30 mg/day. Itching. Nausea. Vomiting.
  - jldugger 6y ago
    I'm really not sure where that citation is coming from. It's a Google web answer but the source has no citation. Wikipedia lists a textbook, rather than anything from NCBI, and I'm too lazy to dig further. A corn torilla or slice of bread in the US typically has 1-2 mg of niacin, and a daily recommendation of around 16mg. 3 oz (85 grams) of "Chicken breast, meat only, grilled" contains 10.3 grams of the stuff[1], and average adults get about 30mg/day. Best I can tell this is about nicotinic acid specifically, and might be IV rather than ingestion, which is very much an apples and oranges situation. 1: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Niacin-HealthProfessional/
pjc50 6y ago
Sometimes who gets to make the rules is far more important than what the rules are.
- bookofjoe 6y ago
  This is profound.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Cars of the same model made for different markets have varying safety features. US destination Japanese cars have better crash protection than those made for their domestic market.
howlgarnish 6y ago
In this particular case it's not even a matter of safety: pasta with <13 mg/lb of iron is no more or less safe than pasta with >13 mg/lb, and as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans). If anything, mandatory enrichment seems like an arbitrary trade barrier imposed on the US side to protect what the article calls "Big Pasta" from foreign interlopers.
- akiselev 6y ago
  > as far as I can tell (read: Wikipedia) iron deficiency does not appear to be a serious health problem for most Americans (or Europeans) "Iron deficiency isn't an issue, probably because there's lots of enriched foods, so let's stop enriching food!" I think regulatory analysis requires a little more thought than that.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    The fact that European pasta isn't enriched and we don't have iron deficiency issues gives a good hint, so.
    - akiselev 6y ago
      Different regions have diets made up of different ingredients, which have different levels of various minerals. Humans don't all eat the exact same thing and they don't all exist in the same exact climate so regulations tend to be curated to their local constituents. Furthermore, in many European nations the pasta is enriched, mainly with fiber although plenty of other nutrients are added depending on the brand and market. European countries just don't have regulations regarding "enriched macaroni" labeling like the US, which is an interesting historical quirk but irrelevant to what's actually in the pasta. Popular brands like Barilla are almost certainly enriched with something - depending on the size of the market it might have been enriched to American standards just to minimize manufacturing fragmentation (i.e. Italy, a huge consumer of pasta and origin of many of the brands will have formulas dedicated to that market, while Norway will receive whatever other formula is closest to their requirements).
mullingitover 6y ago
> It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? We don't need to wonder! They explain it right in the article: protectionism. It's not really that surprising that a lot of regulations have nothing to do with protecting the consumer and are all about protecting the parties that really matter to governments: big domestic industries. > Around World War II, Carl explained, the established noodle industry (henceforth referred to as Big Pasta) was “upset” by the introduction of Nissin’s ramen noodles into the country, which were “completely out of spec” with what the United States then recognized as noodles — specifically because the ramen was being sold for a lower price and with what Carl called “lower standards” of nutrition. “They were really pressed,” said Carl. That’s when the “standards of identity” were created: Big Pasta made sure that all noodles had to meet certain specifications to be considered “enriched macaroni products” and sold in the United States.
- sunpar 6y ago
  “Standards of Identity” are not in and of themselves a bad thing. If a product comes to market claiming to be one thing but it is not, it may damage the market for all other products. Imagine a tv manufacturer claiming to sell a HD tv that is not HD, for example. In this case, the pasta industry did not want their product confused with the new noodles coming from Nissin; this was back in the days when many Americans may not have readily known the difference between pasta noodles and ramen noodles, and wondered why they were paying more for pasta than they could for ramen. Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do. Alternatively, it might be the fact that the pasta company in question was selling buccatini at a lower price, a competitor did an analysis, and they found that this company was saving money by skirting regulation that everyone else is complying with. And they did the right thing by forcing the FDA to apply the rules evenly to all companies.
  - mullingitover 6y ago
    > Now those rules might be perverted to suit protectionist goals, but that’s the whole art of effective hopefully minimalist regulation: it’s very hard to do. Agreed. I'm not saying there's no rational underpinning to regulation, just that it's frequently gamed by bad actors, almost to the point that the original intent is forgotten.
jsmith99 6y ago
That's the importance of regulatory harmonisation. Eg your laptop charger is probably covered in 20 different indecipherable logos showing compliance with every countries regulators, all of whom have standards at least 99.9% identical. The EU has harmonised regulations internally in order to make completely free trade work, so a single 'CE' logo is enough to show compliance for the entire EU. Regulatory harmonisation is controversial though, especially here in UK. No matter that its usually boring stuff like agreeing fire retardant coatings on soft furnishings, the newspapers insisted this was a breach of sovereignty. Expect a new British safety standard (identical but with a different logo) to join the pack.
- toyg 6y ago
  I’m really looking forward to a pile of reduced-safety standards from the people who gave us the Grenfell disaster...
- rvba 6y ago
  Note that there is the CE symbol (confirmation of Europan standards) and there is also a very simila CE symbol that means "China Export". The second one does not have anything to do with European standards. It is deceptively similar.. guess why
  - conistonwater 6y ago
    Wikipedia says the European Commission says this is an urban legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking#China_Export I mean I don't know anything about it, just wanted to point that out. But then this one https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-How-To-Distinguish-A-Real-CE-Mark-From-A-Fake-Chinese-Export-Mark https://support.ce-check.eu/hc/en-us/articles/360008642600-H... says it's real, I'm confused. Edit: I'm going to go through every single device/cable I have at home and examine the font and the arrangement of the two letters now, the C and the E need to be on two circles that overlap by exactly the width of the lines.
    - gruez 6y ago
fomine3 6y ago
Regulation isn't made just by health/safety perspective, but includes cultural, social and others. For example, Katsuobushi is the core part of Japanese food but it seems that exporting to Europe is difficult due to EU regulation. Another example in Japan would be K-car. As a Japanese, I never want to give up Katuobushi for improving health. I suspect that maybe oppositely, European people also has food or culture that banned from other country . https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/ https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/
- anilakar 6y ago
  The article you linked makes it rather clear that the reason for banning imports has nothing to do with culture but with the carcinogens in the product. The Spanish factory uses a safer smoking process.
- neltnerb 6y ago
  Wasabi is impossible to get in the USA, my understanding was that this was because of Japan's rules rather than those if the USA. We just have horseradish with green food coloring in the USA.
  - splonk 6y ago
    It's not impossible, it's just expensive to import and difficult to store. Higher end sushi places would usually have it. Now there are at least two farms in the US producing it that I know of, one in Washington state, and another in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco, and there's even some retail distribution now in SF.
    - neltnerb 6y ago
      That is very exciting! My old karate instructor owned a sushi restaurant and I got the strong impression that the mob looked poorly on attempts to export. He may have been exaggerating.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I think Germany and the Netherlands have some similar vehicles to the K-car, but not sure they are the same from a regulation point of view
jbay808 6y ago
It seems that regulations are often a little more lax on products produced domestically. Can we trust states with major pharmaceutical industries to regulate pharmaceuticals? Major car production centres to regulate emissions? Major chemicals companies to regulate chemicals? I'd be a little suspicious, living next to such a country, if they insist on my adopting the regulations they wrote, which of course their industries all successfully meet to the letter.
DanBC 6y ago
> Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. It's true that they don't make much sense and that they often harm the consumer, but I vote in my regional politicians and in theory can vote them out if they impose standards I don't like. One of the problems with Europe was the perceived lack of democratic control coupled with the dishonesty from anti_EU campaigners about things like straight bananas.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  The problem is that unless the bad regulation is hurting everyone a lot the regulations will be around for 10-50yr after you vote them out.
sircastor 6y ago
I work for an automotive manufacturer that has a model that couldn’t be sold in the United States due to its lack of a steering column airbag (probably along with other items). It has led to an aggressive destruction of imported vehicles by customs officials and seizing of legal vehicles due to mistaken identity. I don’t care for this, but I understand it. Rarely do we hear about the lives that were saved thanks to the regulatory body doing its job.
CorrectHorseBat 6y ago
Because we don't have a world government so every government can do what they want. Even ignoring protectionism there are a billion different ways to make reasonable regulations and many of them will be incompatible in some ways. Countries working together on regulations is a thing, but it also does slow down things and takes a lot of effort. >Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? I don't see any way how that could work out any better than the current situation.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Aerospace goy pretty close, with EASA and the FAA accepting each others certification. Until the FAA blew the 737 MAX and everyone had to show how tough they are. And because the FAA did screw up.
  - woliveirajr 6y ago
    And in Brazil the certification caught the problem... Not accepting each other certification with blind eyes can be a good thing.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Couldn't agree more! Even just conducting double checks on others certification would do a lot of good.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      I wonder how many Embraers pass Brazil certification but fail FAA/EASA.
throwaway3699 6y ago
> Or vaccines. Why isn't there a global approval system? Global systems are inherently more fragile, no? More eyes on something is always a good thing, less likely to be corrupted by corporate interests, etc...
ben_w 6y ago
Different product, but eggs make an interesting example of why: Both USA and UK markets take steps to avoid salmonella. The method the USA requires the eggs to be refrigerated, the method the UK uses effectively requires that they are not (at least not until you get them home, once you start you can’t stop). https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/why-the-u-s-chills-its-eggs-and-most-of-the-world-doesnt?t=1609237226579 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/09/11/336330502/wh...
- deleted 6y ago
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rvba 6y ago
How is Boeing Max safe for Americans but it crashes elsewhere?
- jessaustin 6y ago
  This was just luck. An aircraft with a special randomly-initiate-death-plunge function will crash somewhere first and somewhere else second. If the public is stupid enough to keep flying in it, eventually it will crash all over the place. In this case, the flying public decided that two horrible crashes was enough.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Look up the blancolirio channel on YouTube, specifically the Max episodes and you'll how close we came to crashing them here.
rsynnott 6y ago
As mentioned later in the article, the offending requirement likely isn’t a safety thing, but a 1940s era protectionist thing.
estaseuropano 6y ago
Different doesn't mean one is better or worse. You get objections to GMO food in Europe while in the US this doesn't even have to be labelled. Chocolate standards that mean most US chocolate cannot legally be called chocolate in Europe as it doesn't contain enough cocoa. Chicken has to be chlorine washed in the US before sale, a practice that is prohibited in Europe. Eggs in the US are washed before sale which makes it necessary to keep them in the fridge afterwards while in Europe eggs are nornally sold unwashed (in some countries (all EU?) It's even prohibited to wash them). Let's not even talk standards for wine and raw milk cheese, use of corn syrup, regional denominations, slaughter and animal welfare rules, ... Not easy to find a simple resolution to such strong differences in some sectors. Opposition to trade deals among Europeans usually stem from (1) fears of lower food standards (incl. animal welfare), (2) worries about slavery and labour exploitation and (3) worries about low environmental standars. I'm sure the US has similar recurring themes popping up.