Produce in Europe may get ugly

Government regulation is often a curious thing. (OK, maybe that's a nice way of putting it.)

Case in point: Proposed changes to European Union vegetable grading are raising the ire of French, Italian and Spanish produce interests. From the Web site EuropeanVoice.com:

"From artichokes to watermelons, the EU has a whole raft of legislation governing how fruits and vegetables should appear from the outside. Never mind if they are more tasty, vegetables that are too long or too knobbly, slightly misshapen or blemished are, under current rules, consigned to the EU’s food dustbin. But the European Commission, conscious of the food shortages around the world and of rising prices in Europe, has now decided to edit the rulebook on fruit and vegetable and cut back on waste."

"The Commission is proposing to relax rules on 26 different types of fruit and vegetable, including Brussels sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, mushrooms, plums, spinach and walnuts, allowing under-sized or misshapen products onto supermarket shelves. They would, though, need to be labelled as “products intended for processing”.

"The proposals, if backed by EU member states, would mean that Europeans could soon be shopping for forked carrots, strings of onion with fewer than the until now mandatory 16 onions, bent cucumbers and green asparagus that are actually 50% white. Consumers should use these sub-standard products for cooking, salads or jams, the Commission advised."

France, Italy and Spain maintain the current regulations protect consumers from poor quality produce, the article states, adding that regulators are confident changes will be finalized by year's end.

Of course, because it's government work, there's a loophole:

"In a bid to sweeten the pill of reform, the Commission has said standards will remain for some fruit and vegetables: kiwis will still have to measure a specific diameter, and a bunch of table grapes will still not weigh more than one kilogram."

Cutting regulatory red tape is a serious issue to European produce firms and ultimately the public, but the issue conjures images of poker-faced men in in lab coats placing calipers around kiwifruit. Here's hoping business and consumers both benefit from the changes.