Brussels’ weird meals requirements had been ridiculed by British conservatives within the runup to the Brexit vote
The British authorities will ditch an “absurd” EU rule on the sale of abnormally curved bananas, Surroundings Secretary Therese Coffey introduced throughout a Conservative Social gathering convention on Monday.
Talking on the Tories’ annual get-together in Manchester, Coffey declared that “bent or straight, it’s not for the federal government to resolve the form of bananas you wish to eat.”
EU Regulation 1333/2011 dictates that bananas offered within the union should be free from “irregular curvature of the fingers,” except they arrive from designated areas of Cyprus, Greece, or Portugal. Previous to the 2016 Brexit referendum, the rule was cited by pro-Brexit politicians and pundits for example of overreach by “bonkers Brussels bureaucrats.”
Different such examples embody an 1,800-word directive on advertising and marketing requirements for headed cabbages, and a ruling forbidding producers of bottled water from claiming that their product relieves dehydration.
Regardless of widespread mockery of the ‘flexible bananas’ rule, it stays on the UK’s regulation books virtually 4 years after Britain formally left the EU. It was set to be dropped together with all remaining EU regulation by the tip of the yr, till the federal government reversed course in Might and mentioned that it might as an alternative consider residual EU legal guidelines one after the other.
Greater than 4,000 such legal guidelines remained on the books as of Might, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was criticized by Brexiteers for opting to scrap solely 800 on the time. The vast majority of the 4,000 legal guidelines associated to the surroundings, which means that Coffey is now chargeable for which of them are scrapped and that are stored.
She didn’t state whether or not each EU regulation beneath her purview could be dropped however mentioned on Monday that she would additionally take intention at “inexperienced zealots who suppose our farmers ought to cease rearing livestock and as an alternative we should always eat pretend meat,” and would take away restrictions on genetically modified crops.
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