English curd cheese producer, Bowland Dairies, has been put out of business by the European Federation.

The European Commission’s Food and Vetinary Office (FVO) issued an alert saying that the curd cheese broke their rules on antibiotic residues and was therefore unsafe.  The British Food Standards Agency (FSA) inspected the premises, found that the FVO’s report was wrong and that the products were, in fact, entirely safe.

The FVO again claimed that the curd cheese was unsafe and the FSA responded that the FVO seemed to be confused about what type of milk was being used and that the product was completely safe.  The FVO appended its own comments to the FSA’s report saying that the product was unsafe.

Bowland Dairies took the FVO to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) who concluded that, based on the legal and scientific evidence, the product was safe and the FVO were wrong to try and ban it.  The FVO tried to append its own negative comments to the ruling saying it had only lost on a technicality.  The judge refused and FVO were ordered to withdraw their claim that the product was unsafe.

The FVO again spent 2 days inspecting Bowland Dairies but couldn’t find anything wrong.  Despite this, the European Commission asked its Standing Committee on the Food Chain to approve a ban on Bowland’s product.  Of the 25 members of the committee, 22 of them approved the ban whilst the UK abstained.  The committee was not given access to the ECJ’s judgement or the scientific evidence proving that the FVO was wrong in its assessment.  The only “evidence” provided was a defence of the antibiotic residue test by the company that invented it.

Even though Bowland have done nothing wrong and the European Commission has broken an ECJ court order, the British Department of Health has rushed through statutory instrument Curd Cheese (Restriction on Placing on the Market) Regulations 2006 which has immediate effect and says “No person shall place on the market any curd cheese manufactured by Bowland Dairy Products Limited”.

Yet again, it’s one rule for us and one for them.  An English company has merely tried to go about its lawful business yet the European Commission has contrived to illegally put this company out of business with a complicit British government helping them to do so.

Hat-tip: Eurealist