Monday 30 April 2007

Analyse This!


Thanks to my pal Hackstaple, I was alerted to the story doing the rounds at the moment about the Dorset baker who was hauled over the coals by her local Trading Standards department for selling Robin Tarts. These delicious-sounding, sweet confections have a marzipan effigy of a robin on them, apparently - but not a trace of the bird in the actual ingredients.

Ivan Hancock, Dorset county's trading standards manager, is quoted as saying:

"The fact is that a piece of food needs to be properly described so that the consumer can tell what it is.

There's nothing wrong with using other names but it must be accompanied by the true name of the food.

Consumers have the right to know what is in food."

Personally, I think the same process of labelling should be applied to the brains of (at least some) Trading Standards Officers.

Where will it all end? I was reminded by a post in Crofty's estimable blog, of the delights of the Yorkshire Curd Tart.

When I consumed these in my youth, it never for a minute crossed my mind that they might contain the minced up remains of northern Iraqis who had travelled to our fair county to sacrifice themselves for the good of the White Roser's.

It's political correctness gone mad!

3 comments:

Francis Cook said...

Please do not be misunderstaning mister. We peoples of the high mountains are living by Armenia and Turkey and also very much Iraq for sure. But it is that we are called Kurds, which is sayed Koords by the Kurd-ish peoples.
Thanking yous
PS As in Kurds and Whey

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your kind comments. I just hope Trading Standards never ban Turkish Delight on the grounds that it doesn't actually contain any real delight.

Please tell your fellow-countrymen that no offence at all was meant by my comments. I have fond memories of holidays in Turkey, even if Mrs Blunt hasn't.

Anonymous said...

This is Hackstaple [really me but unable to post under my own name because the system does not allow me in] with an up to the minute report on the Pigs and Robins. I emailed Dorset Standards and politely told them that Ivan Hancock is a silly interfering busybody.
They replied that Sergeant Bun was not told they could not use these names. The officious offical was worried about nut allergies and it is OK they continue to use the names as long as they are qualified by a full description of the contents. So, the next time you visit Sergeant Bun you should ask for a "Robin Tart but with no Robin but flour,water, 0.03g salt, natural spices, butter, lard, strawbery puree filling, no hydrogenated fats, produced in the EU, warning this is prepared in an environment where nuts are used, please remove packaging before consumption".