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Comment by adrr | Hacker News Reader

EU laws aren't being enforced. All the fake olive oil is coming out of Italy. If you want real virgin olive oil in the US, you have to buy the California ones. It was also reported that Kobe beef was being sold at European restaurants even when Europe had a ban on Japanese meats during the Mad Cow Scare. Those are things just off the top of my head, i bet if you actually dug in, Europe has many examples of where fake products are sold.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2016/02/10/the-...

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> EU laws aren't being enforced.

Sorry, to be blunt, but this is bullshit. There are scams (olive extra-virgin was a big problem), but in general the rules do work and problems are being addressed, e.g. in Italy every olive tree is now digitalized [1].

If you want 'extra protection/certainty' then please buy labeled 'bio-food' with strict condition. Sure also there, you might find cheaters, but it is rare.

[1] (sorry, german) http://www.nzz.ch/nzzas/nzz-am-sonntag/ein-schmieriges-gesch...

> EU laws aren't being enforced. All the fake olive oil is coming out of Italy.

Not seeing how the two sentences follow. Why should the EU be enforcing its laws on food packaged there, if the latter is destined for shipment to the US where pretty much anything goes?

well for one thing wouldn't the EU want to be known as providing good food? The EU should simply not allow the products that are not true to be sourced from a EU country.

Your values aren't worth squat if they aren't applied to all you do. This just means that if you are willing to sell shit labeled as flowers to a foreign nation it will happen at home too

The regulations we're talking about concerns the marking of food. You are still allowed to sell shitty vegetable oil, you're just prohibited from calling it Extra Virgin Olive Oil when you're selling it in EU. The fact that the shitty oil can be labeled whatever in the US is outside the scope and reach of the EU.

Fair enough, but then again, you were complaining specifically about _Italian_ olive oil rather than EU values as a whole. Keep in mind that Italy has large regions that were traditionally run by the Mafia and the Camorra:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Mafia

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camorra

Also, keep in mind that - in contrast with the US and as already raised elsewhere - the EU tends to crack down on would-be fraudsters and prosecute when they find issues. Also, it's not unheard of for businesses to tip health inspectors to check out their competitors at the slightest hint of fraud. It might merely be an impression, but the same in the US seems to require alerting consumers and sometimes alarming them before the FDA bothers to wake up (as put on film in e.g. A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich).

I don't think you can say that just because rules are being broken, that is a case for them being repealed.

It's the default American approach to assume that a failed implementation equals a failure of a concept.

To be fair to our American friends it's not solely their bias; a lot of the pro-Brexit voters have a similar feeling about the EU.

You don't really know how many of the voters voted against the implementation, and how many voted against the concept, do you?

No, but going by the commentary, and voxpops, I can safely assume "a lot", which is what I said and meant.

Did Japan have incidences of Mad Cow disease? I thought it was a British thing.

The UK had by far the worst problem, but there were at least 20-30 other countries that had BSE outbreaks.

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