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Wednesday 22 November 2023

Always a pleasure



'Don't touch our Camemberts!' France cheesed off with EU over packaging rule

French cheesemakers are furious about a new EU recycling rule which could see the traditional round wooden boxes used to encase Camembert cheese replaced with plastic.

The European Parliament is set to vote on the proposed new regulation which will state that by 2030 all food packaging must be recyclable.



Always a pleasure to see the silliness of bureaucratic rules exposed, especially those concocted by euroloons beavering away in the bowels of the EU.

6 comments:

Sam Vega said...

I thought we were manufacturing too much plastic. I can't see the problem with wooden boxes, regardless of what it does to the cheese. Burn, compost them, or just chuck them in landfill. They are sustainable as long as we keep a few trees alive, non?

DiscoveredJoys said...

The bureaucratic mind is a wonderful thing.

1) We publish suggestions about the best way to do most things...
2) To avoid ambiguity we turn the suggestions into guidance for most circumstances
3) People still pick and choose which guidance to follow
4) To avoid untidiness we turn the guidance into rules
5) Authorised rules must be followed, even if they are not appropriate, because rules are more important than doing things sensibly

One size will fit all.

A K Haart said...

Sam - I don't see the problem with wooden boxes either. Of course there isn't a real problem, it's a bureaucratic problem.

DJ - yes, rules are more important than doing things sensibly. Rules provide a reason for being a paid bureaucrat. Unfortunately we seem to have reached a situation where far too much bureaucratic activity is like a disguised version of digging holes then filling them in again.

decnine said...

Wisdom includes the capacity not to let Principles prevent you from doing the right thing.

Mark in Mayenne said...

I thought we were supposed to be cutting down on single use plastics, like straws and food packaging

A K Haart said...

decnine - I agree, bureaucrats would certainly have an insoluble problem were they to try codifying wisdom. Of course they would need to recognise it first.

Mark - I thought so too, it seems an odd target in that respect.