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EU delay chocolate decision
Tuesday, 14 March 2000
A final decision in a 27-year EU battle over British chocolate has been postponed.
Euro MPs were expected to vote to allow chocolate made with up to 5 per cent vegetable fats to be marketed in all 15 member states - ending discrimination against the UK's favoured chocolate bars in some continental markets.
But the decision in the European Parliament in Strasbourg was postponed until tomorrow.
If MEPs vote in favour, high milk content chocolate bars from Britain will have to be labelled as Family Milk Chocolate in other parts of Europe.
The concession is a small price to pay after years in which the UK confectionery industry has fought off repeated attempts to force changes in the content of UK chocolate bars - and to refuse to allow it to be called chocolate at all.
An updated EU Chocolate Directive looks certain to oblige EU countries to accept all chocolate, as long as the vegetable fat content does not exceed 5% of the finished product and there is clear labelling.
British milk chocolate will continue to be called Milk Chocolate on the home market, but will have to be labelled Family Milk Chocolate if exported to the rest of the EU.
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EU to scrap straight banana laws
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
We will soon be able to buy knobbly carrots and ugly apples again
Curvy cucumbers will be back on sale in the shops from next July if, as expected, more than two dozen laws banning imperfect-looking fruit and veg are scrapped today.
EU-wide marketing standards ensuring only the finest-looking produce reaches supermarket shelves have been in force for 20 years.
But to reduce red tape and bureaucracy - and make cheaper fruit and veg available as household bills rise - eurocrats say it is time the unnecessary restrictions disappear.
EU standards currently stipulate the size and shape of 36 types of fruit and veg sold in Europe, from apricots to watermelons.
If today's vote goes through, the rules will be repealed for 26 of them, including artichokes, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, onions, peas, carrots, plums, and ribbed celery.
Specific market rules would stay in place for the 10 products which account for 75% of EU fruit and veg trade - apples, citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches/nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes and tomatoes.
But national authorities could exempt even those 10 from the rules on shape and size, as long as they are put on sale labelled as "product intended for processing" or something similar.
The Commission said that, if the vote goes through, the changes cannot be implemented until the start of July next year, for practical reasons.
But when the mis-shapen produce does reach the shelves, retailers estimate it could be sold as much as 40% cheaper than the current "class one" goods.
Conservative MEP Neil Parish said: "These crazy rules have to go immediatelly.
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Janet Devers, 64, said she was "in shock" at the decision to sentence her for selling the goods in pounds and ounces rather than kilos and grams.
Magistrates ordered Mrs Devers, from Wanstead, east London, to pay just under £5,000 in costs and told her she would have a criminal record after being found guilty of eight offences under the Weights and Measures Act.
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Janet Devers, the metric martyr
The "metric martyr" was also convicted of selling vegetables for £1 a bowl rather than counting them out individually, a common practice among Britain's estimated 40,000 market traders to help customers confused by metric measures.
"I am flabbergasted by the decision," the pensioner and mother-of-two told The Sunday Telegraph. "Last year the EU commissioner said that Brussels didn't want to criminalise people selling in pounds and ounces – and yet the British authorities are doing exactly that.
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