The plastic tax.

[miasmum]

Morrison’s do lots of wonky veg. I buy the carrots and the peppers for the guinea pigs

[Workingman]

It was not just a storm in a teacup, the French colony banana's matched the "standard" and the UK former colony banana's did not. Therefore the French produce could be labelled Class 1 and gain a higher price, whereas the British product could not.

Oh dear, are we still peddling Euromyths?

There never was any basis to the "Bendy Bananas" story or as the EU calls it The Myth to end all Myths.

Similar is true for straight cucumbers. From Wikipedia::

"The Sun" has claimed that "Cucumbers have to be straight and must not arch more than 10mm for every 10mm of their length", an accusation which is false. The EU writes: "Cucumbers do not have to be straight. There are grading rules, which were called for by representatives from the industry to enable buyers in one country to know what quality and quantity they would get when purchasing a box, unseen, from another country. Nothing is banned under these rules: they simply help to inform traders of particular specifications. The EU Single Market rules are identical to pre-existing standards set down both by the UN/OECD and the UK."

EU text

The cruel irony is that a portion of "wonky" veg goes on to be processed into the likes of croutons of carrots, swede/turnip, parsnip etc. It is then bagged up and sold for a premium price. The same can be said for some fruits, which are turned into fresh juice "100% fresh, no artificial additives" - non of your concentrated rubbish here. Pay up - full whack.

However, for a bit of perspective that still leaves 50 million tonnes going to waste. If we all ate 3kg of fruit and veg per day that is enough to feed 45 million of us for a year. OK, we do not all eat the same stuff, so there would still be 'some' waste, but still....

I buy wonky veg from Morrison's and it is fine, unfortunately the range is pretty small for everyday needs.

[Suff]

I very specifically did not talk about "bendy banana's". The way the directive was applied discriminated against the smaller and more curved products by forcing them into a lower class. Thus reducing the value they could attain.

Even the EU statement you pointed to makes this clear..

Class 1 bananas can have "slight defects of shape" and Class 2 bananas full-on "defects of shape".

As I said, it is the classification which the directive controls, Not, specifically, whether they are bendy or not.

Although the directive does state

The main provisions of the regulation were that bananas sold as unripened, green bananas should be green and unripened, firm and intact, fit for human consumption, not "affected by rotting", clean, free of pests and damage from pests, free from deformation or abnormal curvature, free from bruising, free of any foreign smell or taste.[1] The minimum size (with tolerances and exceptions) is a length of 14 cm and a thickness (grade) of 2.7 cm. It specifies minimum standards for specific quality classifications of bananas (Extra, Class I, Class II).[1] Only Extra class bananas have to comply fully with the shape specifications. Class II bananas, for instance are permitted to have "defects of shape"; Class I bananas are permitted only "slight defects of shape".[

Now who remembers the hands of much smaller, very curved banana's, that Geest used to sell?

This directive came into effect in 1994. Geest sold its banana business to Fyffes in 1995....

As for the bit about "green and unripended"? All bananas sold in the EU start out as green and unripened.

The Fyffes Group ripening facility in Basingstoke is the largest in Europe and is able to accommodate 117,000 boxes (or over 2,100 tonnes) of bananas at any one time.

This directive gave a specific advantage, in terms of classification and, therefore, price, to produce from specific areas of the world. This is how the EU works. "Look don't blame me I'm just trying to keep standards up". Whilst creating standards which discriminate...

Then millions of tonnes of produce are scrapped, each year, because they can't meet the top classification and then must be sold more cheaply.

There is no point in complaining about us scrapping food that is just "ugly", without pointing the spotlight on where that problem begins. It begins with anti competitive regulations on "classification". As veg doesn't always grow to "regulation", produce which is not "first class" and therefore of a higher value, doesn't always make it to the shops.

Since veg is organic in nature and degrades pretty quickly, unless there is a processed food capability close by, food can be scrapped. Before I left the Army I worked on a farm during my last few weeks of holiday. We were harvesting potatoes. The best went to the shops. The next grade went to the processed food. The worst of shape and quality, damage etc, went to the crisp manufacturers.

This is OK in the UK where our facilities, due to 22 miles of water, tend to be within a reasonable distance. However when you are talking about veg grown in Spain and processing facilities in Poland, food winds up being dumped.

It is all part and parcel of the body of law which gives EU citizens some of the highest living standards in the world. But it is wasteful. It is designed to be wasteful. We know as, when we lived on the farm cottages, we'd go out and night and take some of the cauliflowers from the mountains grown for EU subsidy, which were to be dumped and not even fed to cattle. We had a lot of cauliflower soup.....