THUS Magazine

Over 20 years ago Brussels had decreed that henceforth fruit and vegetables needed to comply with ideal standards of shape, size and colour. Vegetable eugenics was a boon to Europhobes, supermarket buyers and agrochemical manufacturers alike. It accelerated the demise of smaller arable farms and prompted a growth spurt in plastic cloches, despite the best efforts of the French-led CAP lobby.

This week, in a move to cut bureaucracy and, in a grudging admission that vegetable tyranny is the unacceptable face of federalism, Europe decreed that misshapen fruit is OK again. “This marks a new dawn for the curvy cucumber and the knobbly carrot,” said EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel. 24 other fruits and vegetables: apricots, artichokes, asparagus, aubergines, avocados, beans, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflowers, cherries, courgettes, cucumbers, cultivated mushrooms, garlic, hazelnuts in shell, headed cabbage, leeks, melons, onions, peas, plums, ribbed celery, spinach, walnuts in shell, water melons, and chicory are now free to express themselves as nature intended.

But only up to a point. Several of the most popular items; apples, citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches and nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes and tomatoes remain rigidly standardised, as a sop to almost half the member states who still voted against relaxing the rule. According to EU spokesman Michael Mann, vendors will be able to sell deviant versions of the above as long as they are labelled as a “product intended for processing” or similar. The European Commission must formally adopt the changes which, “for practical reasons”, will be implemented from July 2009.

In theory, this should help to maintain or reduce prices, but in practice, supermarkets will probably try to pass wonky fruit and veg off as organic produce, which often carries a disproportionate premium. According to Supermarket News, rules for straight bananas are not affected.