Now this is the sort of story that you would think I would rage at:

For lovers of Indian food, variety and spice are essential
components of a perfect meal. But it appears that the poppadum, a
staple accompaniment, can be subject to too much variety — in shape,
size, flavour and consistency. It may be crispy, circular and spicy or
chewy, plain and square.

So
now the United Nations food and health agencies are to lay down
international standards for how the poppadum can be manufactured.

International bureaucrats, layiong down the law? See Timmy snarl and froth at the mouth! Yet…

The Codex was set up by two UN agencies, the Food and Agriculture
Organisation and World Health Organisation, in 1963 to protect
consumers and ease international trade.

It now includes thousands of products from cocoa, salt and
sugar to frozen broccoli and tinned anchovies, describing in detail the
chemical components and processes that make them what they are.

Once an item is included it can be produced and sold anywhere
in the world providing the manufacturer complies with the Codex
standards.

That’s not quite how it works. Products that do not conform to the Codex standards can still be sold anywhere in the world: anywhere in the world that they pass the relevant food tests. What inclusion in the Codex does is state that you already meet the relevant health standards and thus there is no need for further examination.

This is thus a voluntary process. If you don’t want to make your poppadoms the way the Codex will say you should you’re entirely free to continue to make them as you wish. You can even use the word poppadom to describe your product. You just can’t say that it meets the Codex standards.

Voluntary agreements on standards? I’m all in favour of them. Even if they are done by international bureaucrats (which, I will admit, is something of a downside to this particular process).

However, where I start to foam at the mouth is when such things become the law of the land, criminal law for example, as it is here in the UK (thanks to our Glorious Masters in the European Union). 

All of the similar codifications here are backed up by that criminal law. It’s punishable by a £5,000 fine or up to 6 months in jail to breach them. It is these (for example, the jams, jellies, marmalades and sweet chestnut spreads regulations) that lead to carrots being defined, in law, as fruit. That lead to it being a jailable offense to manufacture and sell apricot marmalade.

No, really, it is. You can make marmalade only from citrus fruits. One distinguishing feature of marmalade is the use of essential oils of citrus, and you are indeed allowed to add that to citrus fruit based marmalades. You may not add those oils to jam. Or jelly, or indeed, sweet chestnut puree. So, decide (as one Austrian gentleman did) that you’d like to use Grandmamma’s old recipe which called for apricots and essential oils of citrus and market the result as marmalade and you’re risking pokey. Describe it as jam, you’re still risking pokey. But boil up some carrots and sugar and call it jam and you’re not.

Voluntary agreements along the supply chain that determine what is a Class 1 banana, what is a Class 2? Fine. Similar agreements about the allowed curvature of cucumbers? Why not? Standards ease some forms of trade, while leaving open the trade between willing buyers and sellers that do not conform to those standards.

Even if these standards are going to be drawn up by UN bureaucrats, that’s still less damaging than their lauding whichever corrupt dictator wants to make a speech damning  the free world.

But insisting that those standards become part of the criminal law is a nonsense, a perversion of the very purpose of having the standards in the first place: to ease and increase trade. That’s what’s wrong with the European Union standards. They’re not actually codification of a method of manufacture, or of the allowed contents, at all. They make illegal everything that does not abide by the standards.

Now, whether or not the world would enjoy apricot marmalade, or, indeed, apricot jam that contains essential oils of citrus, is something of a moot point. But a system of law that insists that you serve time for daring to find out?

Fuck ’em.

Can we leave yet?