Europe debates perfection i demands of Its produce

Tag: spanish onions

When is an onion more than an onion, or less? How can consumers choose between a carrot and a mere pretender? That bendy cucumber, those wannabe peaches -- do they have the firmness of character to be on the shelf?
This Story

    *
      Worldview: Foreign Correspondents Examine Life Abroad
    *
      Foreign Correspondents Examine Life Abroad

Urgent and vital questions all, especially for lawmakers in the European Union, which has 34 regulations on marketing standards -- from the allegedly essential to the patently absurd -- for fruits and vegetables.

Consider the Class I cucumber, which must be "practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)." Translation: A six-inch cucumber cannot bend more than six-tenths of an inch. Following 16 pages of regulations on apples (Class I must be at least 60mm, or 2 1/3 inches, in diameter) come 19 pages of amendments outlining the approved colors for more than 250 kinds.

As for peaches, "to reach a satisfactory degree of ripeness . . . the refractometrix index of the flesh, measured at the middle point of the fruit pulp at the equatorial section must be greater than or equal to 8° Brix."

Had enough? So has the European Commission's agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel of Denmark. She proposes scrapping all but 10 of the regulations, arguing that they are needlessly cumbersome and bureaucratic, and that they lead to people throwing away perfectly edible fruits and vegetables for cosmetic reasons at a time when the world is suffering food shortages and rapid price increases. She hopes representatives from the 27-nation bloc will vote to streamline the regulations at a meeting this month.