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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things like the banana regulation, more commonly known as Commission Regulation (EC) No 2257/94.[1] I believe it's now rescinded under

• arethuza 13y ago
  If your comment about "right to make certain types of sausages" refers to the various protections around food actually coming from a particular area I actually think that is a good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_in_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t... After all (to pick an example from the news today) - if something is described as "Stornoway Black Pudding" I'd like to believe it actually came from Stornoway: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-22445935 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-2244...
  • BCM43 13y ago
    If it is exactly the same besides the origin, why does it matter?
    • moogleii 13y ago
      The problem arises when it isn't the same. Black forest ham, for instance.
    • tking8924 13y ago
      I've always viewed it as similar to a regional copyright protection in that a region is allowed to advertise that only it produces the "real" product. Much like any shoe manufacturer can create a shoe exactly like Nike, but only Nike can advertise as actually being Nike.
    • sp332 13y ago
      In the USA, you can't sell onions as "Vidalia onions" unless they're a specific species grown in a certain part of Georgia where the soil has very low sulfur content. It produces a sweet onion that you could only get with specially prepared soil anywhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidalia_onion So, you can imagine with something like sausage, where there are many ingredients that are subject to local conditions, it would be impossible to regulate all the criteria for being identical to sausage made in that region, and it's easier to just limit by geography.
      • shabble 13y ago
        OT: Suddenly the name of the Tor control panel project[1] makes a lot more sense. [1] https://www.torproject.org/projects/vidalia.html.en https://www.torproject.org/projects/vidalia.html.en
    • coldtea 13y ago
      It's rarely "exactly the same". Champagne made in France and Feta made in Greece has specific ingredients, requirements etc, defined by law. In places where those laws don't apply, they make cheap knockoffs with different ingredients mix, laxer process etc, to sell cheaply. Danish or American feta, for example, is nothing like actual feta. At least Denmark cannot name it "Feta", whereas US companies can, thus misleading the consumer. Second, even in cases where it's exactly the same, it's a "point of origin" protection, meant to protect the original region that made the product. The same way that BK cannot name one of their burgers "The Big Mac", but for a whole region/country, not just one private company.
  • jkldotio 13y ago
    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-idUSBRE93M0KX20130423 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/23/us-croatia-food-eu...
    • pessimizer 13y ago
      Those sound like debatable edge cases.
    • coldtea 13y ago
      >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 protection doesn't hold). Also real feta is NEVER sold in crumbles, as you often find it there). Whereas American may like their food standardised by restaurant chain (I can walk into any X chain and get the same food), in Europe it has traditionally be standardised by region (local cuisine, etc). So think of it the same as Burger King being unable to name a product "Big Mac". Only instead of protecting/benefiting just some private chain, it protects/benefits a whole country/region where the food was first developed. Those protections, besides having rules for the "point of origin" also have strict guidelines on the ingredients etc. So you know your feta is X% milk etc, fermented for Y time, etc, and not some random cheap knockout. Of course, nothing stops a company from selling the same product, or a different mix. They just can't name it feta. They can include a sign like "feta like product" though.
      • mjn 13y ago
        I do think the current situation around feta is better than the previous confusing one, where lots of products which were clearly not feta were allowed to be labeled as "feta". But I personally would prefer that methods/contents be regulated rather than location of production. I do think it's a good thing that what used to be called "Danish feta" is now "salatost" ("salad cheese"), because it is simply not feta. But I sympathize with the French, Israeli, and New Zealand feta that's no longer allowed to be called "feta" in the EU, because those countries do produce some genuine feta, in every sense except being produced in the wrong location. On the other hand, I think the same of champagne, and I doubt France would be willing to trade the exclusive right to the word "champagne" in return for getting to call some of their cheese "feta"...
  • dsr_ 13y ago
    Yes, that's a truth-in-labelling law rather than an exclusive right to make a product. "Champagne-method sparkling wine" can come from California, "Champagne" has to come from a particular region of France.
    • specialist 13y ago
      The lack of a requirement for truth in advertising, labeling, news, etc drives me nuts. *"After being fired, the couple successfully sued under Florida’s whistleblower laws. However, Fox won on appeal as courts found FCC regulations against news falsification was a policy, and not a law. Fox then countersued in 2004 for court fees and legal costs." http://consumerist.com/2006/08/30/fox-news-reporters-fired-for-being-too-tough-on-monsanto-milk/ http://consumerist.com/2006/08/30/fox-news-reporters-fired-f... Meaning it's perfectly fine to knowingly lie. Some tortured rationalization about free speech. I'm sure that's exactly what the founding father's had in mind while writing Second Amendment. I'd take the free market zealots a lot more seriously if they were spear heading the fight for consumer protections as a precondition to deregulation.
      • shrikant 13y ago
        That'd be the First Amendment. Unless you think free speech and the right to bear arms are the same..
        • claudius 13y ago
          Well you have to make sure that others really understand and listen to what you’re saying…
  • kbutler 13y ago
    The "geographical indications" are a simple trademark landgrab (pun intended). The geographical regions are trying to recapture exclusive use of a genericized term. Think trampoline, escalator, zipper, and aspirin. The goal is to exclude competitors and increase profits. Next up: France will assert control of the terms french bread, french toast, and french fries, but only to eliminate them as inferior food products.
• Svip 13y ago
  I too would find it naïve at best to think that the EU was perfect; everyone knows that it isn't. I don't understand your complaint about civil law, though; why is common law better than civil law? Civil law has the added benefit of being fairly simple and court rulings not making precedence.
  • rmc 13y ago
    Because it's FOREIGN!!! (unfortunately accurate satire....)
• JonnieCache 13y ago
  >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] To be fair, that's a greek thing and not an EU thing.
• antr 13y ago
  Rather than trying to ridicule the "banana regulation" and "sausage naming rules" you should do a bit more reading on the true advantages for consumers of classifying fruit and vegetables by quantifiable and tangible aspects (size, shape, colour, etc.); and stopping scams by implementing designation of origin legislation on produce such as sausages. The economic impact of these are measured in billions.
• rmc 13y ago
  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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzeDZtx3wUw ). There are a lot of euro-scare stories in England of similar levels of ahem reliability. The European Commission in the UK has a blog where they try to rebut false stories in the UK media ( http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/blog/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/blog/index_en.htm ). (The UK's Health and Safety Executive also has a "things that are mentioned in the UK media which are wrong" section http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm http://www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm )
  • mietek 13y ago
    In all honesty, British sausage probably should be renamed.
    • Xylakant 13y ago
      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.
      • mietek 13y ago
        There is one shining beacon of hope! I try to visit every time I'm in London. http://www.herman-ze-german.co.uk http://www.herman-ze-german.co.uk
  • jkldotio 13y ago
    Thanks for the knee-jerk anti-British rant, and I am very well aware of Yes Minister as well, but I was actually referring to this case.[1] [1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17706290 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17706290
• arrrg 13y ago
  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 and services sold throughout the common market. If that weren't the case, individual countries could easily erect trade barriers between them (through rules that are mutually exclusive, e.g. so that a Spanish manufacturer of wine harvesters can't export her Spanish harvesters to France, at least not without massively changing the production process and in essence opening two manufacturing lines, one for Spain, one for France). So the EU parliament gets this stack of laws on fruits from 27 countries and is told to turn that into one unified law for the whole of the EU. That's basically what's happing. The EU is not so much in the business of making new regulations, it very often just unifies. Now, it's important to stay vigilant throughout this and pay attention and tell the EU when it screws up, but I do not see any kind of systemic issue. I think it all works pretty well for what it is.
  • jacoblyles 13y ago
    I wonder how on earth people got through life before we had the government protecting us from misshapen banananas.
    • arrrg 13y ago
      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.)
• claudius 13y ago
  > "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 EU and get more-or-less the same rather than (possibly annoying) surprises. The problem here arose because the word ‘jam’ (or more precisely, ‘marmelade’) was used differently in different parts of the EU prior to regularisation. I am happy about it. > battles over who has the right to make certain types of sausages Everybody can make any type of sausage, what they cannot do is claim that said sausage was made somewhere else. What exactly do you find unreasonable about that? > 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. So you prefer to have such regulation spread not only over a defined body of laws but also over each and every court decision made within the last n hundred years? On the contrary, I would argue that civil law is inherently superior to common law, as it puts the legislation where it belongs (the legislative, i.e. parliament, and, by extension, the various ministries) and gives consumers and businesses security that, if they follow said legislation, they have a reasonable chance of doing everything correctly, rather than having to take into account court decisions on the other side of the country or hope that the court in question will invent new laws according to the way they want, rather than their legal opponents. There is absolutely no reason to impose a total word count limit on the body of laws. There is a reason to keep that body of law reasonably organised, accurate and easily understandable, which is usually the case, and more so in the EU than the US (otherwise, legal fees would be much higher in the EU, as people would require more help understanding the law, right?). > 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] Well, that’s what you get for becoming less and less competitive and instead extending bureaucracy more and more to accommodate more and more public officers, paid for by cheap credits, assumed to be backed by more sanely operating economies. Greece’s fault, you could only blame the EU for allowing them in. [0] Or are you just annoyed that this is measured in millimetres rather than imperial attolightfortnights or similarly ridiculous unit?
• mikeash 13y ago
  Regarding the Greek cafe, there are plenty of crazy regulations like that in the US, usually centered around alcohol. For example, in Virginia (where I live), ordinary stores can sell beer and wine, but nothing harder. Liquor can only be sold in state-run stores. I suppose the intent is to discourage consumption of hard liquor... and it seems to work on me. The state-run stores are inconvenient enough that I go for softer fare instead of tracking one down. I knew a couple who bought a gas station and turned half of the convenience store part into a restaurant, while keeping the convenience store part open as well. They had a license to sell alcohol, but not a license to serve alcohol. You could go over to the convenience store half and buy a six-pack of beer, but you couldn't get a beer in the restaurant, and you couldn't bring the beer you had just purchased. I recently moved into a newly-constructed house. One of my neighbors had to delay their move-in date by a couple of days, because the builder forgot to paint the curb yellow behind the house to indicate that it was a fire lane, and the county wouldn't give them an occupancy permit. This street has plenty of "fire lane" signs, has very little curb at all (it's mostly driveways), and nobody in their right mind would park on it, but it had to be done. The builder rushed the job, and a few months later, basically all of the paint has flaked away and nobody seems to care. Somehow, this was unacceptably unsafe when we were moving in, but it's fine now.... The Greek example sounds worse, but of course a singular example is hard to draw a lesson from. I imagine we'd all benefit everywhere if regulations were treated as a means to an end rather than ironclad law, in any case.
  • beat 13y ago
    Alcohol laws in America are crazy. In Kentucky, there's a joke about how you know you've crossed a county line when the potholes end and the liquor stores begin. I live in Minnesota, where our liquor laws date back to the era when being a liberal meant you were for women voting and against ANYONE drinking. It was a big deal when we finally got to keep bars open til 2am, a few years back. We can't buy alcohol in stores on sundays, and grocery stores can't sell anything stronger than 3.2 "near beer". You have to go to a real liquor store for even wine and beer, much less hard liquor.
    • mikeash 13y ago
• ricardobeat 13y ago
  There is nothing ridiculous about that regulation. 80% of it is common sense written down. The line you quote is describing where to measure the thickness, since it varies across the length. According to the article this regulation is still in effect.