EU-banned pesticides found in rice, tea and spices
foodwatch.org
foodwatch.org
[†] https://www.foodwatch.org/fileadmin/-INT/pesticides/banned_p...
This is fine-ish, except that the imported oranges get checked only seldomly (if that) and are given a lot of leeway, making it very hard to compete if you grow them locally. Last couple of years saw some profit for growing them locally, but it's been times where there was literally no profit at all for 5+ years.
Funny story: he requested a permit to build a well, and ofc it takes forever so he just waited. After 4-5 years waiting, having even forgotten about it, someone called him: "we're here to inspect the well". What well? You haven't given me permission yet. "yes, we know, but people build them anyway before getting permission so we thought you'd do the same".
Friends of mine recently got planning permission for a house they've been living in for about 3 years already.
So you can def roll the dice on such things, maybe you get away with it for decades, maybe your house gets flattened.
My (also an immigrant like you) take on Ireland is that many of these systems are run and controlled by humans, and you can get pretty far by trying to make that human connection with the people controlling your fate. My wife was initially refused maternity benefit, because she did not have enough social security contributions. She works part-time, and she was missing 1 contribution (about €120) out of something like 38 for the year. After friends (the same from above) suggested we phone them and talk to the people, the maternity benefit application was approved. I find that there is a lot less "sorry can't help you, computer says no" here.
Might be worth noting that the house you mention was built 20 years ago. https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2026/05/...
And indeed, rules against mobile homes are actually enforced in Dublin, but outside the pale we definitely had a different experience.
Unless of course you need assistance with a privacy issue concerning US big tech. Then suddenly you'll be met with nothing but silence in Ireland, as the stream of incoming billions from being a compliance haven for criminal US companies must continue flowing.
It's really just places culturally untouched by Calvinism, Puritanism and the like, all of which put emphasis on order.
The last thing to attempt bringing order to them were various forms of authoritarianism and they didn't last. I think we can agree this is not the right approach.
A presupposition of confession is that you have contrition and the resolve not to sin and wish to receive absolution (which doesn't remove the need for temporal justice btw). Premeditation and without remorse turns that confession into an empty act, and indeed, another sin.
Calvinists also believe in confession. Indeed, it doesn't even require the uncomfortable encounter with a priest. You can just do it privately in their view.
This touches on the purpose of sacraments in the Catholic Church. They are meant to be visible signs that give assurance and certainty that something has taken place. If a human being were to show perfect contrition (very rare), then there is no need for the confessional (and ultimately, God is not bound by the sacraments). But for the penitent, the confessional gives assurance of absolution, provided there is some measure of requisite contrition. You don't have to wonder about your eternal fate after leaving the confessional.
The idea that Catholic societies are corrupt or and Calvinist societies are tidy and ordered is a stereotype, and it is silly and ahistorical to claim that you need authoritarianism to bring order to Catholic countries. Catholic societies have a greater tolerance for the messiness of human life. It views itself like a field hospital ready to provide people with means to get back up and to heal. Calvinists, on the other hand, are strangled by their constant anxiety about whether they are part of the elect or not. That can translate into rigidity, rigorism, scrupulosity, and OCD. These, in turn, can resort in a backlash of moral laxity.
(Another stereotype is the Protestant work ethic. Apparently, no one ever heard of the Benedictines and their influence on Europe. There is also a healthy attitude toward work and an unhealthy one.)
Ireland supposedly cares about nature too, but you can still buy truckloads of turf off the side of the road in Offaly. Good luck getting those rules enforced.
When we still lived in Dublin I got pretty tired of having to push my baby in her pram in the street because the pavements (sidewalks) were completely covered in cars, even in the city centre trying to get to the YMCA creche.
Our experience wasn't limited to "victimless" crimes though. I think when you're threatening your neighbours and letting dangerous dogs loose on other people's land where there's kids or sheep then authoritarianism is called for.
It really is a place where crime is legal.
Authoritarianism would be you and your family getting picked up and interrogated sometime at night for this critical comment you just made.
And saying "crime is legal" when referring to cars parked on the sidewalk or you having had a bad experience with a neighbours dog? I think if you reflect a little you'd realise that these are the kind of "crimes" you probably have committed yourself countless times.
Societies where there is high amount of respect towards each other and rules tend to perform much better over long time, ie Switzerland. Its a pleasure to live in such society especially when coming from more messy ones, triple that with small kids.
How do you know? Do you know of all of the protected species of bug in your country for instance?
In my town there are laws about using profanity in public. I'm sure they would be deemed illegal if charges were brought but the law is still on the books.
But regardless, I’m much happier since leaving.
Happy that you are happier :) I'm German, so in general I find it refreshing when people manage to live peacefully with each other without having a rule for every single thing. Obviously a dog endangering children is not such a case.
Apparently the couple just recently come back from a trip in Ireland and lost the new Samsung phone there. Someone has stolen the wife's baggage from the bus when it's doing the routine transit stop by the bus stop while opening the bus baggage conpartment. By the time they realised the thief already going away from the bus with the baggage with the new Samsung phone inside it. They reported to the police but nothing happened. In UAE, Singapore or Japan this type of crime is just not worth it since the petty thief will be punished severely. A lady can incidently left her Louis Vuitton bag inside a restaurant in Dubai, left it at her seat, then after a few hours come back to fetch the bag without losing anything inside.
https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/uk-free-speech-stru...
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2024/country-chapters/unite...
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/10/uae-reporters-un-cl...
It doesn't have to require authoritarianism to keep the peace. It also doesn't seem like it could only be solved by an authority. If there's a dangerous dog on your property, shoot it if you can't get it to leave and fear for the safety of your kids or sheep.
It and to be handled though. Yes, there may be retaliation for shooting the dog but there may be retaliation for calling the cops as well. All you can do is deal with the situation at hand, there is no magic bullet authority or otherwise.
I know too little about this specific situation, but did the neighbour not stop despite being asked to?
I haven't been to Ireland or the Netherlands (aside from driving through of course), but from what I've heard I would not like it in the latter. Nature appears to be scarce there, as for some reason the Dutch insist on being an agricultural superpower despite the population density.
Maybe it's a language thing, but authoritarianism is never called for.
Rule of law that is just and enforced fairly is what is called for.
You jumped straight to authoritarianism? How about trying self-defense?
Boy you really are a Calvinist
Hobbes. we create the Leviathan so we don't have to constantly act in self defense. The alternative was cold, brutish, and short.
They also routinely trespassed and shot fireworks over our thatch roof (the roof was part thatch, part modern) - very concerning when your roof is more flammable than kindling. Finally they left a dead crow in a bag by our door which felt like a threat, so we sold the place at a €100k loss and moved to the Netherlands.
Gardai were absolutely lazy, uncaring, and useless, and did absolutely nothing.
Now I encourage everyone I can to stay as far away from rural Ireland as possible.
I eventually gained some biases that the former-me who lived in the lefty "Dublin 2 and https://irishtechcommunity.com/" bubble wouldn't have been particularly quick to espouse. Now that it's been a few years I think I'm a little better at seeing different sides of things politically, at least.
Organic labels are a different thing than official regulation though. IMHO organic labels optimize for the wrong things.
What do you mean?
I only know of "Demeter", that also has some very esoteric requirements (homeopathy, cosmic energy flow rituals) - but otherwise organic label optimize for:
- no or little pesticides and herbicides
- more space and better condition for the animals
My only other grievance is that they also all ban GMO
As for the animal welfare, true, but there are also labels specifically for that that.
I ignore all the magic stuff (in fact, if you have some spiritual devotion to the food you're growing I think that's just fine)
From Wikipedia:
> Pesticides are allowed as long as they are not synthetic.[28]
See also:
Sure, the agreements say that whatever is imported needs to comply with this or that standard, but customs rarely inspect these. So you end up importing produce which is much cheaper than the local-grown one and which also doesn't comply with the strict local laws. That's where the "unfair competition" happens.
Sure, I bet French farmers aren't too happy to see tomatoes or whatever grown in other EU countries with cheaper labor flood the local market. However, anecdotally, I never see produce from eastern Europe here in Paris. Non-French usually means Spanish or Netherlands if it's EU, or northern Africa if not. You can mayyybe find son specialty cheese or meat from abroad, but outside the very common Italian varieties and Gouda, it's really not easy to find in regular supermarkets.
However, for some reason, apples from freaking Chile and South Africa seem very common, even in season, although apples grow fine here, including that specific variety (pink lady). And when I do find locally-grown ones, they're usually at the same price.
Edit: I've asked that myself multiple times. There's also some stubbornness there as well TBF.
What happened next? Please continue the story~
> but it's been times where there was literally no profit at all for 5+ years.
But "organic" also targets soil health, biodiversity, animal well-being, and the environment in general.
Some synthetic pesticides / herbicides / fungicides hardly break down in the environment. Which leads to accumulation of a cocktail of such chemicals in soil & ground/surface waters. Ultimately appearing everywhere in air, drinking water & food. Not unlike microplastics, PFAS etc. How this affects humans' health is largely unknown.
Generally, chemicals produced by plants also break down naturally. So they don't accumulate in soils over time.
So it's kind of "exclude nature as much as possible, cleanroom style" versus "work with nature to keep things in a healthy balance".
This was just after the Gros Michel had gone basically extinct because of monocropping. The banana companies hired scientists to figure out what to do that almost universally recommended diversifying the crop. But they calculated that it'd actually be cheaper to just double down on pesticide application and start again with another monocrop.
There's an incredible documentary about the banana industry history (and practices that continue to this day like banana companies paying gangs to assassinate local labor leaders) called Bananaland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoRmtQht8-E
So what's really the difference?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19...
[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/26/a-timeline-of-cia-...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
They also have a few on Bernays because of course they do
Now we're dealing with TR4 because of the Cavendish being grown in the exact same way but with an even heavier reliance on pesticides, slavery, and violent control over local power.
Shouldn't EU ban ideally exports of good that it bans internally?
And then, after all of that, you still have: the solution to pollution is dilution.
What's toxic on a fruit tree for human consumption, is likely not toxic on thousands of cubic yards of dirt or millions of gallons of ground water.
How can anyone entertain that belief unless:
a) they think people in other countries have a different biology
b) profits matter more than the health of people in other countries (mostly former colonies of Europe)
Capitalism is the most effective driver of progress known.
Capitalism has lifted enormous numbers of people out of absolute poverty and is a great positive for the world.
Inequality is an unavoidable side-effect of capitalism.
The optimal risk:benefit tradeoff depends on the resources you have available.
It can be rational behavior for a poor person to take greater risks with their health than a rich person, because the value of wealth has strongly diminishing returns. I personally believe we should have state-enforced wealth redistribution to limit this scenario to a reasonable minimum, but I'm not so naive as to think eliminating it entirely would be the globally optimal solution. In practice, "everybody gets identical protection from pesticides" means "everybody is poor".
Concretely, my friend, I'm afraid this is not quite the world the power imbalances lead us to.
It is amazing that we have regulations for everything and that when they cannot enforce it, they blame someone else.
Different way of dealing with people depending on who, not what.
Also one of my worries with the mercusour trade deal. And any deal that involves meat imports from the US, with specific laxer regulation requirements (at least what Trump would like).
So using these pesticides only on products for export makes utterly no sense!
So EU makes pesticides that itself bans from being used on their own fields. Which isn't that weird, it isn't the chemical that is banned it is using it as a pesticide that is banned.
Problematic products are: Peppers, dried (6x), Cumin (3x), Rice grain (2x), Tea leaves and stalks (1x), Non-fermented tea leaves (1x), Mix of spices (1x).
In other words it's not a reason to avoid a few occasional pinches of cumin.
This doesn't happen to me with anything else, I'm not a picky eater and will happily eat literally anything else
You're not wrong. If you smell pure cumin (without any other spices or herbs), particularly if you grind and mix it with yogurt to make a salty lassi, you get a whiff of body odor. My kids called it "the BO drink".
It's a weird thing, but the smell becomes quite different in combination with other smells. It's an ingredient in many expensive perfumes, believe it or not! [1]
[1] https://www.fragrantica.com/news/CUMIN-Polarizing-Note-of-Sw...
I assume the MRL the lowest amount which could possibly cause harm? If so then why does it matter for the rest of the products where the levels are below that?
It could be for potential environmental harm, but then the fact that these are being exported at all should tell you that they're being used, you don't have to test consumer goods.
Their recommendations include this:
>2. Automatically lower all maximum residue levels (MRLs) of non-approved pesticides to the limit of detection to prevent these substances from making their way back onto European plates via a dangerous ‘boomerang effect
But is this scientifically supported?
https://www.hampsteadtea.com/blogs/news/is-pla-plastic-free-...
I know an Iranian in the Netherlands who says the tea there is mostly coloring.
Chinese tea is again a whole different world from Indian tea, and has a much broader spectrum of complexity. You could spend a lifetime learning about Chinese tea.
But you're evidently talking about green tea, and maybe not black tea. That might explain the contradiction.
Different countries do buy different types and qualities of tea. The US is big market for low quality (dust, stalks) tea for tea bags.
Countries that like strong sweet tea with lots of milk buy tea that is low grown (i.e. lower elevations) and processed using the "cut, torn curled" process rather than the older "orthodox" process. High grown (on mountains) tea is better for those who drink it without milk.
Leaves do tend to be higher quality and they have grades reflecting the size of the pieces. There is a standard system which is marked on some types of tea.
It is usual to pluck two leaves and a bud. Plucking more would add a lot of stalk which lower quality. Plucking or using just a bud produces a very delicate flavour (sivlertips). High grown silvertips is good with
Most tea is blended so will contain a mix of different things.
there's an extensive body of research on synthetics having no effect on human health, from goverment funded, private and independent research... if you access your country's official institution you'll see there's plenty of synthetics allowed in organic agriculture just because they mimic perfectly "organic" substances
interesting point too, is the lack of any extensive meta-analysis/studies on organic pesticide impact on health and plus the fact organic farm is rather poor (produce less than 2% of the global food) and usually if not always lack good machinery to spread pesticides on the recommended quantities science points out (which organic agriculture also has less literature on that too)
Why were they allowed in the first place, if "research" was enough? Science is not definitive, and what we believe to be an approximation of the truth today way be discovered to be totally wrong tomorrow. You are confusing science and religion.
Would you defend, for instance, that DDT and other organochlorine poisons are safe? They were the darling of scientists and agrobiz companies for a long time, until we discovered well that they were dangerous.
Of course, if we find a strict equivalent to a biopesticide that happens to be synthetical, it would be a good substitute. But most synthetic pesticides are not like this, unfortunately.
And what you say about the lack of studies regarding organic farming is a plain lie, it takes 30 seconds on google scholar to find it:
- Farmers in organic farms are less exposed to health effects of synthetic pesticides: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...
- Organic farming improve soils and yields: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658077X2...
- Review on organic food quality and health effects: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s12940-017-031...
as many synthetic are developed... last time i was making an inventory of an exclusive corn and soybean high tech farm (selling on the hundreds millions USD) there was at least 45 different pesticides... some were distributed in a quantity of 10 mililiters! per hectare with machine with proper air filter at the cabine of the tractor never seen by the organic movement, which by the way, considering their ~ 30% increase in land, fertilizers and pesticides needs and their production totalling less than 2% of all the global food, feels quite a stretch to read author's conclusion of your last study...
your 2° cited study shows improvement on soil quality by variety/rotation, what it has to do with GMO technology? one literally can plant varied stuff while using synthetic pesticides... take a look on most health studies done in organics and health not controlling for life style factors, nor any major study even found dangerous levels of pesticides in food. don't get me wrong, there are niche cases were organic crops just make sense but when you start dismissing GMO technology for a 8 billion and growing world, which in decades will move out of the rural ambient (rural flight is an on going thing, literally no one wants to work in farms, much less in organic ones were the workload is much bigger, if not borderline on slavery (trust me, i did some WWOOF)), feels pure ignorancy out of greenwashing or small studies compared to what we rolled on science the past 30 years of GMO technology
https://biofortified.org/genera/independent-funding/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3367244/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7061863/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600850
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6918800/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10814746/
Why are you trying to slide the discussion with GMOs, which aren't relevant since we talk about pesticides?
Saying that "organic has 2% of the world crop" is not true : certified organic crops, yes. Most of the earth's biomass grows without synthetic pesticides, and many farms in the world have the same practices without the labels.
In general, organic farming is a reference, of course that it doesn't have to be a religion. It is also a great source of scientific experimentation, especially for soil regeneration and biodiversity (which alas, I know, isn't profitable for Monsanto&co... yet!)
Using less pesticides in general is something that is proven better[1], and doesn't necessarily reduces yields[2]. Organic farming is part of the global effort for the reduction in pesticide usage, and doesn't have to be hegemonic. Having "organic farming only" areas are for instance great to create havens for biodiversity, while agricorps are allowed to run wild elsewhere.
Overall it's great for consumer choice, and reducing to the maximum pesticides intake for children should be a goal, given their sensitivity to endocrine disruptors.
[0] https://oem.bmj.com/content/68/9/694.short
[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42452-019-1485-1
You’re gunna want to look at the later half of that.
"Organic" as in certified 'Organic' or as in the class of molecules?
If the former then I'd love to see the classification requirements that make a qualifying chemical safer all the ones that aren't.
If the later, that's blatantly untrue
Note that other countries may have different legislations. You are also free to eat DDT to prove that organic farming is not really safer.
Honestly curious, which of these is more harmful than the non-organic alternatives?
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su...
This dichotomy underpins a difference in regulation between the USA and Europe. As mentioned already, the EU Commission applies the "precautionary principle" in its legal regime for food and chemicals. This is not "unscientific". Empiricism has been more popular in the Anglophone world, but rationalism was one of the pillars of the scientific Enlightenment.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/glossary/precauti...
So I always make a point to buy the inorganic one (pun intended!).
Asbestos, is "natural". So is Arsenic. And CO2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
Or do you need evidence that the bio labels are not optimizing for health or environment? Check the rules. Most of them are just there to restrict synthetic products, regardless of their impact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#False_as...
Organic is marketing. Organic produce is more profitable.
In the UK, tea means tea bags and that normally means tea bags made of a plastic/paper mix. If I remember, the bag material is made and then they heat it up to get the plastic out, revealing the holes, needed for the bag.
Of late there has been criticism of microplastics in tea bags, and the posh organic bags have fared quite badly. Fancy sachets are not necessarily it.
As for chemicals, not one farmer spends any money than what is the bare minimum, no matter what they do. They might have to put all kinds of toxic chemicals on crops but they are not going to waste money over-doing it, because they are tight with the money, at all times, under all circumstances.
So the question has to be asked, is it worth worrying about the worrying levels of chemicals in tea when there are worrying levels of microplastics that the body really cannot get rid of with some liver-fu?
But, are there more toxins? The working class British way to have tea is with milk and two sugars. The milk is designed for baby cows, not grown men, they should be 'weaned off' because there are all kinds of things in dairy that might not be toxins, but could be considered to be. For example the cholesterol and saturated fat. Next the sugar, which is fine in moderation, so long as you don't care for your teeth, and, when combined with saturated fat, can contribute to type two diabetes.
Clearly opinions vary regarding the health aspects of milk and sugar in tea, my grandmother almost made it to a century, consuming plenty. However, you can reduce the toxic load from drinking tea by getting rid of the microplastics by using plant-based teabags (even LIDL have them), not having milk and sugar in the tea and, only then, getting concerned about buying organic.
Organic does not mean no nasty chemicals, it means no synthetic nasty chemicals. However, it is still a good nice-to-have, but, realistically, if you want to cut your exposure to toxins, there are these other huge areas that are under our control, but those things are going to be controversial lifestyle choices. Just not using cars 'could' reduce your toxic load far more than any organic teabag.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat
> A 2024 meta-analysis found that odd-chain and longer-chain saturated fatty acids were negatively associated with the risk of cardiovascular disease, including stroke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd-chain_fatty_acid
>OCFAs are found particularly in ruminant fat and milk (e.g. pentadecylic acid).
(I don't know if that means most of the saturated fatty acids in milk, it's full of different varieties.)
With saturated fat the health authorities that have science but industry lobbying to content with, have told us to avoid the stuff because it clogs the arteries and invariably comes with cholesterol because animals. Arguably Ebola and AIDS are worse than a bit of saturated fat, however, it is a clear message, up there with 'smoking is bad'. Yet a vocal minority will spin this yarn about how wonderful saturated fat is. They are for real and tell the gym-going public all kinds of nonsense.
Yet a diet from before farmers started using copious amounts of synthetic chemicals placed saturated fat as very hard to get. There is no fat on wild animals, only on fattened up farm animals (and humans).
In these former times, meat of any kind was hard to come by. Chicken was saved up for, paying in installments for that special birthday treat. Meat such as rabbit was far more prevalent, the chicken was there for the eggs, not to be eaten as a snack in a lunchtime sandwich.
Hence, scale back all the modern day junk to the idealised peasant diet and there is no need to know anything about any modern day diet or nutrition talking points.
People talk about how we spent generations adapting to certain aspects of diet, and so following the habits of old is surely safer, but seem to forget that evolution only really "cares" about producing offspring, not your longevity, or quality of life in old age.
> Although these chemicals are not allowed on the EU market, they can still be exported from European Member States to third countries. From there, they can return to Europe as residues in imported food — a “toxic pesticides boomerang” that puts consumers at risk.
This seems like a new economic-chemical place for the term to be used.
Modern gas chromatography is ridiculously sensitive.
Of course, the legal limits are purposefully designed to be well below the LOAEL, and those companies that were found to contain levels above them should face consequences. But to claim they "poison the people" isn't true.
In reality it depends, being biology, "safe level" is also very relative since you don't know every effect the substance has on the body.
That's why pesticides and other chemicals such as bisphenols are regularly phased out, since effects can appear long after "scientific research" established it was "safe". Or it can affect certain populations, such as farmers, who get a high dose, or children, who are more sensitive than adults.
Others, such DDT, lead or cadmium, are accumulated in the body over a long period, and then start to show effects, even when the person has stopped eating it. Or can find their way later the food chain: Inuits would get poisoned when eating polar bear's meat, that was full of DDT from fields on the other side of the globe.
There's a common thought pattern among conspiracy theorists. "Some conspiracies turn out to be real" so that justifies their belief in their very specific conspiracy theory. The same pattern occurs when we talk about chemicals in our diet or the environment. "Some chemicals turn out to be dangerous" but that doesn't prove that a specific concentration of a specific chemical is doing anything, unless we have data to support the claim.
For instance, bisphenols in plastics baby bottles were proved problematic after decades of use. Precaution principle would have recommended to avoid them (especially since they weren't necessary).
It's not trivial, and many businesses would rather see their consumers die than cut their margins. I remember buying some custom furniture; when it arrived it reeked of varnish smell. I called the factory, told them they didn't cure it correctly. Manager said "yeah we know, we know it's dangerous but people get cancers years later and you can't identify the source anyway" (true story).
The burden of proof shouldn't be decades of research seeing thousands of people developing serious health issues and/or dying, and then reacting. It should be on companies, having lengthy and expensive process for approval and then continue reviewing. This is not some app release ffs, we talk about lives and health of billions, how much more we can fail our children if we fail this.
Or you know what, you can do that with you and your kids, but please allow me and my family to use more conservative approach, I am happy to pay a bit extra.
We have all these terrible illnesses that we ascribe to bad luck, and then all of these new chemicals we haven't fully studied yet being sprayed on everything.
The same argument applies to pesticide or any other substance. Without talking about specific numbers, it's just speculation.
https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article-abstract/33/3/378/2354...
From safety regulations to baby toys with lead paint.
The EU will probably do nothing again.
All of the beekeeper associations complain about it, regularly conduct lab tests with honeys from supermarkets, most of them being not honey, or mixed with fake honey.
The EU of course has done nothing : the beekeepers aren't powerful enough to distribute the right bribes to the right people. Meanwhile the consumers buy glucose syrup at 15€/kg.
But hey, we have USB-C! It evenS out, right?
- Lab testing is complex, requires to identify the DNA of pollens in honey and few countries can do it at the moment.
- Honeys are mixed, so it's trivial to receive fake honey in a country that allows it, mix it, and reexport to another one that forbids it. Same happens with olive oils, no one cares.
- Many brands just lie, given that there is no enforcement regarding food traceability and safety in general in the EU (it's a meme to reassure consumers). Where I live a brand advertising "locally made honey" was found to sell glucose syrup : nothing happened.
Who wants to bet "Mercosur" agricultural products won't be checked at the border and will - surprise - turn out to have "issues". Has the forced labor agriculture in South America been solved yet?
Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking_in_South_Ame...
I guess not. Will the EU check? Hah!
Has nature protection been solved yet?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_Brazil
Nope. Will the EU check? Hah!
The EU makes their companies to compete against slavery. First in China, religious-ethnic slavery. Now in South America, also mostly ethnic slavery.
The downvotes aren't surprising, people who have spent enough time on this orange site tend to lose the plot
Guess he just want thirsty at that moment.
I'll settle for no soft apples.
Better keep pushing the farmers in the EU away for more of these great “trade deals”
Or you buy your tea from other first-world countries, such as Japan.
Local variants exist. But supermarkets are convenient and cheap.
My country at least (and probably yours too) is producing more organic products than ever before. People are also consuming organic products more than before.
Natural pesticides do not support biodiversity. It's natural fallacy.
I never buy any food ever from China.
These do involve foods from China though..
Ever been to Innisfail? Have you seen them fly small Cessna's over the banana fields and absolutely drench them with pesticides?
They do this with all the crop fields in Aus.
- encounter minor problem
- apply poison permanently and liberally
Afaik there's some EU work towards closing this loophole. But nothing major that made it into legislation (so far). No doubt Monsanto, Bayer & co have lobbyists + lawyers working to slow down or prevent that.
Believe me, the majority of “The rest of the world” does not protect its citizens from harmful food contamination.
And to many Americans this is even worse: If you are not best™ or worst™ ... you are unremarkable, 'E pluribus unum'.
s/is/was
The US is trying really hard to lower its position on these lists. The US has not been near the top of reading/writing/arithmetic in a long time. The US is undoing a lot of federal regulations by eliminating/reducing agencies meant to regulate things like EPA, FDA, Dept of Education.
If anything, this OP demonstrates that the EU regulations are futile (though that may be an overstatement).
but for Food related stuff, EU standards and regulation are truly superior for consumers, relative to US and other countries
Many things that are well known memes are completely false. Not everything in the EU is better regulated. Everyone always complains about chlorinated chicken, not realizing that <5% of US chicken is washed that way as chicken now uses vinegar washes, and those that did were at concentrations deemed safe by the FDA.
Source for that? All I can find says EU have stricter labeling standards except for forum comments such as yours here.
Edit: > Many things that are well known memes are completely false
To me it looks like "USA shows more additives due to harsher labeling standards" is just a meme, everything I've seen says Europe has stricter requirements on what you need to say about additives. So USA having much more additives listed comes from American products having more additives in them, not everything is better in USA.
The European approach to food additives is visible. The EFSA assigns a 3- or 4-digit code to every food additive, and that number must be included on food labels if it’s used in a product. The EFSA believes this system makes it easier for consumers to look up and memorize specific additives.
In the US, those same additives are required to be printed out in full.https://www.daymarksafety.com/news/some-fundamental-differen...
EU labels are not required to list as much information about nutrients in a product as compared to US food labels. Plus, they often omit such items as saturated fat, fiber, and sugar.Those aren't additives, it just means you don't need to breakdown the nutrients label it doesn't change the additives.
So the things you have brought up doesn't seem to be the reason USA has so many more additives listed on their products. If you give a single example of an identical product listing more things in USA than in the EU and how these regulations influenced that I could trust you, but as is what you say seems to just be a meme.
We do list all of that, but thats usually a separate table, or if not a separate bloc of text. Its always there. Posting random webs scraped by llms ain't providing facts and personal experience to discussion.
So, the issue with chlorinated chicken washing is not that the chlorine is unsafe, as such. There are two concerns. The first is cross-contamination. The second is that there is some evidence that it is essentially a cheat; it defeats common tests for salmonella but does not actually reliably destroy the salmonella. So, if you allow chlorine washing, then you can pass the tests while not fixing supply chain problems.
Reference on most American chicken now being washed with _vinegar_? As far as I know that’s fairly uncontroversial ineffective.
“The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years.
…
Less than 5% of poultry processing facilities still use chlorine in rinses and sprays, according to the National Chicken Council, an industry group that surveyed its members. (Those that still do use a highly diluted solution at concentrations deemed safe.)
Nowadays, the industry mostly uses organic acids to reduce cross contamination, primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.“
> primarily peracetic, or peroxyacetic acid, which is essentially a mixture of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide
The NPR should possibly hire a science editor. Peracetic acid is not a _mixture_ of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, any more than water is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen. It can be, though in practice is not, made by _combining_ them.
Anyway, same concern as chlorine from the EC’s point of view; it’s an attempt to clean up the problem after it is created, of dubious efficacy, whereas EC policy is to attempt to avoid creating it in the first place.
That is mostly a myth. EU and US take different approaches to setting food safety regulations, which means they have different lists of banned substances. The EU bans a lot of substances that have no evidence of actual adverse effects just out of an abundance of caution or sometimes even because of uninformed public perception, which is why their regulations seem more comprehensive, but the vast majority of that has no real positive effect on consumers.
https://blog.ansi.org/ansi/differences-between-eu-and-us-foo...
In terms of actual food safety, the US is basically the same as the EU (it technically ranks even higher than most EU countries on the "Quality and Safety" criterion of the Global Food Security Index, but the top countries are all very close)
https://insights.economistenterprise.com/sustainability/proj...
(Before anyone accuses me of something, I live in the EU and generally prefer EU in terms of lawmaking and regulations. It's just that food safety specifically is a point of comparison which is much less true than people usually think)
10% milk fat (more exactly 1.6 lb per pre-mixed gallon, but that's simply a bizarre way of phrasing it), no more than half air by volume. 6-10% other dairy solids (lactose, whey).
Compare with the UK: at least 5% fat (no cows need be involved)
France requires 5% milkfat, Germany at least requires the 10% milk fat, but no further requirements.
Canada pretends to be at 10%, but if you add any flavoring at all that can go down to 8%.
Nothing said that EU farmers used these pesticides, its related to imports. And even most imports they tested were in the legal limit even though they are from areas where these things are legal.