Himom, I remember that! The Tyson company argued to the feds that despite blasting chicken with enough super cold air to freeze the surface, their birds should nevertheless be called “fresh” rather than frozen. Sheesh!
The EU though has a fetish for legal labeling and definitions. My sister said they spent days trying to decide what is a cucumber exactly. They want to be able to protect things like they do with the DOP labeling in Italy (Designated Protected Origin). For example, you can buy San Marzano canned tomatoes from anywhere but they only get the DOP label if they are grown on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius.
I’m sure Feta cheese puts them in a quandary. Denmark produces the most but now that Greece is in the EU, they probably want exclusive use of the word Feta in some fashion.
I’m all for labeling country of origin, country of production, and GMO status but I don’t want us to get paralyzed. That’s the danger in the EU. For us, the danger is having nothing at all on the labels because that is what the big producers want!
I suppose they want something like the German Beer Law so they know what they re actually getting. http://germanfood.about.com/od/drinks/g/What-Is-The-Reinheitsgebot.htm
I have a horrible intolerance to sulfites and I struggle with the way preservatives are allowed into our foods without having to declare them. The “fresh wash” that the bagged/plastic container was rinsed with bothers me. Food companies have to declare what they put in the food, but if they buy an ingredient called “fresh wash”, that is all they have to put on the label. The company they buy the fresh wash from has to declare to them what that is comprised of. Anything listed as “flavors” is another warning bell.
I think in the EU, they require knowledge of all preservatives and they are in a category they refer to as the E 200’s
The EU does appear to have a fetish about labels. But I personally think that’s not a BAD thing, considering the shenanigans producers would get away with otherwise. And the fact that some of these fetishes are rooted more in the interest of protecting a brand, rather than consumers, doesn’t change the reality that labels should matter, often a lot.
Knowing brands and what the brand stands for is not necessarily bad for customers.
As for the cucumber thing, well, I read about that too, as it’s frequentlyvused in international business classes or Europe studies examples, and it comes from the family of cucumbers* being used for pickles and such. They may get bogged down into the details just let’s be frank, are our corporate lawyers defining products and brands any different than settling a dispute between two competing interests ?
- sorry, not a botanist, I'm sure there's a proper term. :)
The problem was they didn’t want to allow cucumbers with any amount of curve to be sold. Little cukes that you make into dill pickles often have a little comma curve at the tip. Asian cukes are always very curved, often like big fishhooks. Those were all illegal for a while. Were they policing farmers’ markets? IDK. It was years ago and I hope they’ve learned their lesson but it’s safer and better to have more variety in our produce rather than less.
As far as I know they were sold just not under the name “cucumber”. The distinction worked in some languages where different types have different names and not in others, where they don’t. And while European lawmakers do stupidly get bogged down on minutia like this, in the current situation it really is about both the brand and the customer. They’re not necessarily opposite (although they might be.)
In any case, Nabisco, cargill, Coke, etc, aren’t fighting the labelling on behalf of customers… Quite the opposite.
All I know is that I never felt sick when I ate in Europe, on two different trips to 4 different countries. They are doing something right.
This isn’t a thing the FDA gets excited about. Anyway, the food side of FDA is stretched thin. I doubt they will want to add new labeling laws. The EU can request whatever they want but Congress doesn’t have to pass a law about it and/or FDA add a new regulation about labeling. EU has some very odd labeling rules.