Makes them easier to parse for the average person than if they were in just raw kWh. A GU10 Philips Hue White Ambiance with a crap G efficiency rating is like 5 kWh/1000h.
Makes it easier to compare to electricity. If I'm attempting to switch to only electricity I can more easily see what I'll be needing, heat pump, battery size etc
What’s weird is that they automatically assume it’s not! I’d assume it’s not part of a trade agreement or something. The brits just think “oh well, it’s probably the government colluding with big food companies to screw us over”. The worst part is that they’re probably right!
If Britain wants higher standards, they can address their own standards. This is like Americans complaining that their meat is not labelled according to Japanese regulations. It's just irrelevant.
Did food standards desync between the UK and EU considerably since Brexit? I doubt that loosening food standards happen in general, but I can imagine newer EU food standards that are not copied over to the UK.
> Did food standards desync between the UK and EU considerably since Brexit?
It doesn't matter. When people see "not for EU" in a label, what they understand is "not for EU because it doesn't meet the EU requirements", which implies that the EU has higher requirements which aren't being met by that product. And a further implication (understandable since brexit means "we don't have to follow the EU requirements anymore") is that the EU requirements haven't changed, but the UK requirements have, and the product only follows these new lower requirements.
No, UK has not reduced standards, they're still in line with EU. But, as you note, it won't be a surprise for the EU to introduce new standards that the UK doesn't want to follow, so this labeling seems like a forgone conclusion.
> Shoppers can rest assured, however, that the labels do not denote a reduction in standards. Aside from some divergence on pesticides, British food standards so far remain largely unchanged since Brexit.
This is quite the misleading wording. Britains own standards remain largely unchanged, meaning that they did not reimplement the standards enforced by the eu via national law. It follows that the standards are lower than pre brexit.
One of the steps of Brexit was incorporating all the then-existing EU standards into national law, because that was far easier than trying to figure out which regulations they wanted and which regulations they didn't in the X-month period they had.
Probably not if I had to guess, but trade deals between the EU and Britain still need to be worked out, and that trade needs to be facilitated by customs enforcement which there hasn't been infrastructure for before between the EU and Britain.
Complicating the issue is Northern Ireland which effectively falls under the jurisdiction of both. If British products need to be sold there, they need to be distinguishable somehow from the versions that are allowed to leave Northern Ireland into the rest of the EU.
That combination of shared jurisdiction and lack of trade infrastructure is how you get these labels. Its the laziest solution to a self-imposed problem.
The eu regulations no longer apply to food companies operating in the UK, as the UK no longer is in eu-jurisdiction.
The uk govt would have to re-implement them one by one, which a) would be a considerable effort and b) defeats the point of brexit, and thus likely come at political costs.
It's the opposite: Upon leaving the EU, the UK basically declared their standards to be exactly those of the EU (at the time that they left), unless the government decides otherwise (there's a bit of a fight about exactly how that happens, as I think at the moment the cabinet has the power to throw out whatever EU legislation they like, as opposed to parliament voting on each repeal, but I might be wrong about whether that actually passed).
This is better than the alternative, which would basically not having any national standards until they developed their own, but you are right that it basically means brexit has mostly increased the amount of paperwork and friction in trading but not actually produced material benefits for most industries in the UK. And in general it makes sense to follow the EU for most standards anyway: if you diverge too much you risk people just not bothering to sell in your country anyway. There's already stupid headaches like this: for EMC certification, if you need a lab to do some tests to sell in the UK and the EU, you currently need to get a lab in the UK and a lab in the EU to perform the exact same tests to the exact same standards. This means a lot of EU companies are just not bothering to certify their products for the UK market (customers will often just import them illegally).
> The uk govt would have to re-implement them one by one,
You have it backwards. They have to de-implement them in order to get rid of them. The EU doesn't have federal laws in the way that the US does, each law is independently implemented in each member state.
UK halts trade negotiations with Canada over hormones in beef ban.
Canada has been pushing for the UK to relax a ban on hormone-treated beef, which its producers say in effect shuts them out of the British market.
Pleasantly surprised the government is being sensible about this. I suppose they reckon food standards have enough popular political sway they'd be losing out if they compromised on it (it was absolutely one of the big fears about trade deals post-brexit: being strong-armed into lowering standards by the US especially).
> Another posted a picture of some ham in Sainsbury’s, moaning: “We presume not meeting EU food safety standards. Good enough for little Englanders who thrive on second-rate everything though.”
Not sure exactly what a "little Englander" is (I presume some political faction); but whenever someone throws in a contemptuous dig like that, I feel a little schadenfreude, like their unhappiness is deserved.
"Little Englander" is a derogatory term for English nationalists and British people who are xenophobic or naïvely nationalistic — for the latter, those who think England is "better than all other countries", and that England should only work together with other countries when there is a direct advantage for England rather than for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
However, the current Brexiteers favor a powerful Britania that rules the waves. That does not seem to rhyme with independence of colonies, which is what that wiki entry describes. It might be that the writer thought it meant something else, though.
It's an ironic appellation of the term. The Brexiteers may want to be a world-striding UK, but the UK doesn't have that clout. In leaving the EU, they left one of the entities that did have that clout (in the rare moments that the EU could find a unified voice).
It sounds to me like maybe there's an older use of the term that emphasized independence from the colonies and a newer version that maps more or less to "right populist".
I don't live in the UK, but it seems like this might be similar to how the new populist/Trumpist Republicans are still called "Republicans" even though they don't support a lot of things that previously were associated with Republicans (foreign intervention, state & local rights, etc.).
Probably pride flag/Ukraine/Palestine/Israel/what ever the "current thing" currently is. Though, there's the other side of that as well, the "I'm against the current thing" flags, US, Russia, etc.
a lot of hatred for assumed and imagined hypocrites here.
In general I feel a lot of the discourse around what people who supported brexit believe or are like (or indeed, what all british people are like) is entirely divorced from my experience living in the country. I don't know what to do but be saddened by people delighting in widening rifts between people
I'm sure some people are delighted by this. My take on it is that this is the bed the YES voters made, and now they are lying in it. I don't get any pleasure from rubes being duped, but it's also hard to have sympathy for them. They had an opportunity to think about this before voting, they had all kinds of people talking about the consequences, and they went right ahead with voting YES anyway.
I wish everyone could have critical thinking & reasoning skills, but since that isn't the world we live in, highlighting the after effects of decisions like this feels like the responsible thing to do for the next time a hugely consequential bill is introduced. We don't need to mock the people affected, but pointing out the completely foreseeable outcomes as they're happening is still important.
It's a Northern Ireland thing, because the land border to the rest of Ireland is also a land border to the EU. The UK's food standards are fine, last time I checked the overall food security (welfare, etc) and food standards were tied in second place, with the US.
> My take on it is that this is the bed the YES voters made, and now they are lying in it.
But that's exactly my point, you're seeing this as a person having made a foolish decision, and now suffering for it.
But there is no such person mentioned in the article. It's an entirely imagined hypocrite.
I imagine all of the people upset that they no longer have EU food standards voted to keep the EU food standards...
The people mentioned in the article are from london and are eating "Ardennes-style pâté". They are not, as a class, people who voted for brexit. In the article, one of them complains about the nationalistic fervour of others that led them to this point.
I don't imagine there are any brexit voters out there who feel anything other than pleased about the appearance of "not for EU" labels. They probably feel it supports long-suffering local farmers, and will serve to stimulate the production of things in the UK as opposed to importing it from eastern/southern Europe. Whether they are right or not is entirely immaterial to my point, which is that people who know very little about matters persist in feeling superior over people they don't understand the motivations of
I think it is very strange how politicized the topic is in the USA, and the level of interest. I think many Americans see it as symbolic of their own personal political pet interests.
Brits should either suffer for the illiberal hubris, or are noble for defying tyranny.
Few of the terminally online take the position that it is simply a British issue to determine what they want, and wish them the best in sorting it out.
> I think many Americans see it as symbolic of their own personal political pet interests.
I don't know if it's true of other nationalities, but Americans definitely project their domestic politics onto foreign conflicts and controversies that they know nothing about, and then very strongly take sides (e.g. viewing Israel/Palestine as something close to American racial politics with funny accents).
> Agreed, I just find it interesting how intense the projection is, and also how superficial.
I think it's because they're basically "casting" some foreign faction into a domestic political role. The Remain faction are the "Democrats" of Brexit, the Russians are the "MAGA Republicans" of the Ukraine war, the Israelis are the "white people" of the Israel/Palestine conflict, etc.
I get that, but what I would like to know is how these topics end up end up selected, and not something else. What were the magic combinations of factors led everyone to project onto these topics specifically.
There is lasting resentment over Brexit (in the US), but nobody cared about Croatian ascension. Ukraine is a US political battleground, but the loss of Crimea was greeted with indifference.
I think there must be something about the political and cultural moments that cause these issues to gain traction over other topics, or none at all.
> There is lasting resentment over Brexit (in the US), but nobody cared about Croatian ascension.
One factor (of many) is language: I'd imagine any domestic happening in an English-speaking country will loom much larger in the minds of of Americans than anything happening in a non-English-speaking one.
I'd also image that leads to a lot more convergence. So a US Democrat would in fact have more alignment with a UK Labor party supporter that a lot of other foreign factions.
> Ukraine is a US political battleground, but the loss of Crimea was greeted with indifference.
I recall Russia's 2014 actions in Ukraine as being confusing (little green men) and being accepted with a whimper. Russia's 2022 actions had high drama: unprovoked invasion, columns of tanks, videos of fighting, big losses followed by big gains, etc.
But to your point about "political and cultural moments," that's definitely at play too. The Russian attempts at election interference and the Trump presidency made Russia into an enemy in the minds of liberals, and sometimes I feel like they feel the Ukraine war is almost a front in the anti-Trump "resistance."
One other interesting example is Falun Gong. Before Trump, my impression was that Americans were generally sympathetic. But once Trump started taking a more antagonistic stance against China, and Falun Gong then aligned with him because of that, I noticed Liberals echoing CCP talking points about Falun Gong pretty frequently.
It does, but it also still exports to the EU. This kind of label is more of "we can't be arsed with getting a full certification for this product" and the mix of taxation with the head-in-the-sand solution to where the Northern Ireland customs checks go.
Quite a lot of people spoke of both of these, loudly, between the vote and the implementation. Their concerns were not only ignored, they were derided for bring it up.
Isn't there a blanket ban on the UK exporting meat and dairy products to the EU now? Or is there any legal path to certify UK dairy products to be sold in the EU?
I am from Northern Ireland at the heart of this confusion. I think Veda Bread should be marked as Not For EU. I am sure this alone would encourage immigration to our little island.
> Shoppers can rest assured, however, that the labels do not denote a reduction in standards.
..so far. One of the oft repeated reasons for leaving the EU is that "we no longer have to follow 'their' guidelines." There is nothing stopping the UK government from diluting food standards.
Missed opportunity to give existing EU-compatible food safety standards a BS number, and stick a kitemark on everything spinning it as a positive (rather than consumer-neutral, though misinterpreted as negative).
No opportunity. Any manufacturer wanting to export anything to EU, and that includes Ireland, needs to label all of his UK bound wares with "not safe for human consumption" labels.
The 90s called, Angus Deayton wants to be credited for his joke about British Beef getting a special label during the BSE crisis — a skull and crossbones with the word "Achtung".
These are the demographics that did not want brexit
1) Educated
2) Young
3) Living in Northern Ireland
4) High income
However about 1 in 4 people alive in the UK in 2016 voted to strip the citzenship from 67 million people and enact trade barriers with the major economy on the doorstep, so thats what we have.
> “In a food world where labeling leaves a lot to be desired and has been subject to much politics, for the government to introduce a ‘not for EU’ is frankly stupid,” Tim Lang, a professor emeritus of food policy at City University of London, said.
Then perhaps Tim Lang, professor emeritus should have raised this "stupid" move some years ago, when it was announced.
From the little bit of reading-between-the-lines in these, I assume that the author has been critical of Brexit with regard to UK national food issues; this aligns with the explicit "stupid" label made in this post.
