Ayran vegetables

We have all heard about the crazy bureaucratic rules and regulations that the European Union has been imposing upon fruit, vegetables, cheese, meat, eggs and, well every conceivable type of produce, but have you ever wondered where all the crap ends up? You would assume that it is recycled, tossed into mass compost heaps or fed to pigs, but my personal belief is that it is shipped to Finland and distributed to the supermarket chains.

Every week the selection includes golf ball-sized white onions, mouldy red peppers, squashed tangerines and bruised apples, what is going on with the import policy in Finland? The only produce that is ever edible are the ones that have the little Finnish flag sticker, for which you have to pay outrageous kilo prices. Finland is supposed to be a part of the EU, or have they misunderstood and are 'apart' from the EU?

The EU is aggressively promoting an 'Aryan' master race of fruit and veg; they are advancing the ideology of a pure selection of root crops, the elimination of 'defective' stone fruit and ridding the world of genetic deficiencies in citrus fruit. We all remember EC regulations 1169/93 and 3596/90 from 1998 that governed the size of peaches. It was illegal for greengrocers and supermarkets to sell size-D peaches, which is 2 - 2.2 inches in diameter and not the bra cup size.

Other measures included carrots having a top measuring 20mm in diameter; certain varieties of apples being at least 65mm in diameter; plums requiring a minimum size of 35mm to be classified Class 1; and bananas being at least 13.97cm long, 2.69cm in diameter and do not have "abnormal curvature".

Initially I was totally against Brussels obsession with imposing correct size and weight upon items. It was forcing the closure of generation-old businesses, it was raising the prices in the shops, fines were being imposed and chaos was reigning. However, all of these anal directives are old news to the British who had to deal with the bureaucracy when it first started to appear in the mid-90s, but it is about time somebody enforced quality control in Finland.

During one of my summers, I worked as a vegetable packer that supplied three of Britain's major supermarket chains. We were instructed to throw away produce that I now regularly find on sale at my local Helsinki store. I cannot understand why a major food store would have trouble obtaining quality food goods, when small greengrocers in the UK can stock their shelves with goods that look edible, although perhaps not always meeting EU guidelines.

Finland's government and the Finns need to start complaining about the quality of their imported fresh produce to their EU representative before the fines begin rolling in. On the other hand, perhaps Finland knows no different and believes that the coconuts and bananas are grown up in Lapland.