Proving that stupidity in government sneers at national and geographic bounds

[unixronin]

In a move planned to show its solidarity with other government bodies in findign time to fiddle while Rome burns, the EU has approved new regulations that will prohibit selling eggs by the dozen.

The new rules will mean that instead of packaging telling shoppers a box contains six eggs, it will show the weight in grams of the eggs inside, for example 372g.

[...]  The rules will not allow both the weight and the quantity to be displayed.

So you can't even mark the package "One half dozen large eggs, net weight 372g."  And I suppose the next refinement will require every carton of eggs to be individually weighed and marked with its actual weight, because, you know, you can't put 12.07 eggs in a package to make the weight come out to a nice round consistent number every time.  UK food industry experts described the new EU ruling as "bonkers" and "absolute madness", and it's hard to disagree.  There are products, like eggs, car tires etc, that it simply makes no sense to sell by weight.  Can you imagine walking into your local tire store and asking for 112kg of tires, or going to the bicycle store for 92g of replacement spokes?

Crises come and crises go, the world economy melts down, the Eurozone is facing potential collapse as bankrupt member-nation economies implode, Shari'a law is metastasizing into European nations, but never let it be said that the EU Parliament is too busy to find the time for stupid, pointless crap like saying that you can't sell a dozen eggs as a dozen eggs any more.

Comments

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I would assume, at first glance, that each package *would* have to be weighed individually. Eggs vary in weight even more than rough bulk hamburger . . .

And they'll have to be marketed in decimal lots, not dozens . . .

(On the other hand, I'd like to have some kind of rational check on the size variation we've been seeing in a dozen "large" eggs.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Now, I could see having the packages marked "One dozen large eggs, net weight not less than [whatever]".

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_%28food%29#Chicken_egg_sizes, US egg size brackets cover a quarter-ounce (7g) range, with large (for example) eggs being 2oz/56g or more, but not exceeding 2.25oz/63g. On that basis, I could see requiring that a box of a dozen large eggs have a net weight not less than, say, 696g (12 eggs averaging 58g each). But requiring them to be sold strictly by weight is just silly.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly -- the US system is basically a "not less than" kind of system (ok, they are ranged, but although the grades also have ceilings, I don't know many people other than bakers or people with very small poaching pans who'd be upset to get XL eggs instead of L). Works for the production side by being simple. Works for the consumer by being reliably set as a ceiling/floor set, which helps for planning in recipes.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

My folks have an antique scale used to determine the size of eggs.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Yes, but eggs are used in quantum units of single eggs. This regulation was written by someone who clearly believes that the way one cooks one's breakfast is to call for a servant to do the job.

If their regulation had been more sensible, it would have called for the gram weight in addition to the quantity, rather than banned the quantity. Then again, if they'd really been sensible, they wouldn't try to regulate something like this -- if there were a real consumer demand for gram weights, then wouldn't firms be marketing them that way already, in order to be more competitive?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the EU, just like the UN or any other entrenched government, cannot really conceive of anything that it does not believe to be its just and rightful place to regulate.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

I can already see the new cookbooks: "add 36 kg of egg..."

Actually, I suspect that it's a start toward making so that eggs have to be sold in shell-less state, perhaps in a sterile carton. That way you just decant out the appropriate amount of gloop. Get them as mixed, all-yolk, or all-white. Who knows, maybe they'll be able to get battery chickens genetically modified to just squirt out shell-less eggs.

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

First, assume a spherical chicken of uniform density... O:)

[attutle.livejournal.com]

I can already see the new cookbooks: "add 36 kg of egg..."

That's a lot of egg.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I I noticed that later. I was really meaning grams, but what the hey. Maybe it's in industrial quantities.

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Egg whites are already sold in that manner, so what the heck. Just another step to distance people from [the sources of] food. For their own good.

This is what happens when bureaucrats are put in charge of art.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That, or just replace them with vat-produced synthetic sterile non-fat cholesterol-free egg-like food replacement product...

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

It's abundantly clear that the damnfools who came up with this have never even attempted to cook.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

They have staff for that.

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

Hopefully, their staff will start serving them things based on this stupidity. :)

[skellington.livejournal.com]

Not that I've had a problem with cooking with different sizes of eggs, but a medium egg is 3 Tbsp of egg, and an XL is 4 Tbsp.

So if you have a recipe with 6 (XL) eggs, that's really 8 medium eggs..

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

Hmm, buried in 174 pages of amendments to a 75-page bill, but bill was rushed through without time to correct it.

Law of unintended consequences, anyone?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think it's an endemic problem these days.

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

I should note that my BS meter has pinged on this story because eggs are sold by the dozen/half dozen in at least Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France and Germany as well as the UK (see comments at http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2010/06/eggstraordinary-bureaucracy.html ). In other words this "UK exception" claim is bogus.

If such a new regulation has been passed then it will clearly affect more than the UK. It could be that everywhere in Europe is gong to change but I'm guessing the greater likelihood is that the regulation is scrapped now that people have discovered it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

It could be that everywhere in Europe is gong to change but I'm guessing the greater likelihood is that the regulation is scrapped now that people have discovered it.

One would hope so, because this is absurd. It's lawmaking for the sake of lawmaking.

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

Which forwards my theory that any government, once formed, will begin to create laws (whether sane or not) just for the sake of justifying their own existence.

[house-pundit.livejournal.com]

In other news, Brussels has today announced the formation of a working committee to replace the antiquated and cumbersome definitions of pi and e with more user-friendly metric definitions.

At a press conference, spokesmen announced that the member states had established the committee as a rational compromise between reactionary elements which had opposed the measure and a progressive coalition proposal that had originally included c and the masses of the various quantum particles.

[house-pundit.livejournal.com]

A spokesman for the United Nations released the following statement: "There is a clear consensus among respectable physicists and mathematicians that the EU proposal on constant harmonization is vital to world peace and economic progress. We would urge peoples of the world to avoid falling prey to the flawed arguments of kooks and quacks whose alarmist arguments are held by a clear consensus to be seriously scientifically and mathematically flawed and should not be allowed to get in the way of the treaty process to address this emergency with proper international law."

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

I think the Alabama legislature already tried that, in an attempt to make pi equal to three.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's an urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/religion/pi.asp

Ironically, the Alabama myth is based in fact, though there's no evidence the person who started the Alabama myth was aware of it. The original is the Indiana House Bill #246, of 1897 (http://sites.csn.edu/jmatovina/indiana_pi.htm). It was written by a crank who managed to get his representative to present it in the House, where it passed 67-0 (apparently because no House representative actually understood it). It then died in the Senate after it came to the attention of a math professor from Purdue who happened to be present, who proceeded to explain to the Indiana Senate that it was complete nonsense.

My favorite detail of the whole affair is that when a representative offered to introduce Professor Waldo to the bill's originator, one Dr. Goodson, Prof. Waldo declined on the grounds that he was already acquainted with as many crazy people as he wished to know.