More EU madness

As brought to my attention by the EU-Serf, this little article in the Telegraph about the difficulties of getting canadian saskatoons into the country. Saskatoons are a type of berry the canadians have been eating for several centuries but the EU prohibits them because they're a "novel food". Well, novel in Europe maybe, but not really since they've been eaten in some of those countries for a good long while also.

This isn't a new thing either, for saskatoons or other foods. The same regulations were used to try to keep grape tomatos out of the EU (in my opinion because they compete with european cherry tomato growers).

The article beats up (unfairly) on the guy responsible for enforcing the novel foods regulations and the Labour Party (though they probably deserve every hit they get) and throws in a few good words about Brussels solving the problem.

What Boris fails to mention however is that it is EU regulations that mandated the two year waiting period and the agency overseeing "novel foods" in the first place. The only problem Brussels (has ever) solved was the one they created in the first place.