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EU consumers don’t trust US goods: a look into Trump’s trade deficit claims
(theconversation.com)
It's not just the EU. US safety and standards are a pathetic joke
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2025
200 points (99.0% liked)
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The times I have learned that a safety standard I have seen or had to follow was just a STATE law and not a FEDERAL LAW has been way too fucking high. But it makes me glad I'm in California and not anywhere else in the US. Just gotta make sure I don't get food from Fresno.
Meanwhile the number of times i've seen people mock CaLiFOrNiA SaFeTy RuLeS is too damned high. Jesus christ
The idiotic "may cause cancer" labels are to blame for that. When warnings are constant and over-the-top, they get ignored. Good ideas often backfire.
the EUs version is cooking warnings
in Australia technically we have to get a licensed electrician to change a light bulb
I can accept when it about messing with the installation but a lightbulb? Those are made to be easy to replace. It's a screw and a threaded socket, 95% of the case. Unless someone is purposefully trying to do something wrong, the risk close to none.
When i was living in the US because i had to for work none of their olive oil tasted like olive oil. Turns out there was a study that showed that 80% of supermarket olive oil in the US is fake.
Yeah their products are shoddy. You do not sell fake olive oil to a European. Living around the Mediterranean your whole life you learn to tell immediately when someone is fucking with your olive oil.
I mean, my italian friend was telling me how this is also done in Italy. He watched a documentary, and they were mixing olive and colza. So nothing really new. But the new deregulation of the government is worrying.
What I remember was how sweet their may was , yuk.
Yeah, "impure" olive oil is not endemic to America. Adulterating olive oil is big business and Europe isn't immune. (Though Europe has laws on the subject that the US does not.)
Olive pil wasn't a thing on the states until the 80's. We get all the shittiest olive oil that is produced in the Mediterranean because they can sell their inferior products at a markup here.
Yeah even though I'm in the UK I will never eat US chicken. The reason they wash their chicken and eggs is because Salmonella is endemic to US poultry because their standards are so lax they'd rather chemical their chicken than fix the problem. 🤮
I lived in the US and elsewhere, and I also travel. Chicken in the US is at best flavorless. Food overall is of lower quality. Even US brands and fast food chains taste better outside the US.
It's not exactly that. In the US we insist on perfect, white eggs. No chicken shit or feathers, heaven forfend! Because most Americans have never touched a chicken, let alone seen one.
So we wash hell out of our eggs, which thins the shell, which makes the egg less resistant to bacteria.
Europeans understand that eggs coming from a chicken's ass sometimes have feathers and poop. Because it do be like that. So they get thicker, tougher, more resilient egg shells.
Consumer behaviour and preferences – on both sides of the Atlantic – play a huge part in the US-EU trade relationship. A trade deficit often reflects differences in production costs and product quality. This suggests that American consumers generally prefer European products over domestic alternatives, while European consumers favour their own products over American ones. The result is a trade deficit in favour of the EU. One major contributing factor, particularly in food exports to the EU, is the bloc’s stringent regulations on agriculture, which the US has repeatedly challenged. These include rules on hygiene and pesticides (known as sanitary and phytosanitary standards, SPS) and geographical indications (GIs). Longstanding and unresolved trade disputes involving agricultural products have limited US exports to the EU, particularly in beef, poultry, and dairy products.
I prefer European imports, whenever possible, but it's rare, being in a food desert.
US always had lax safety standards for food, but now with FDA being led by a nut job, it will get even worse.
I shop at Costco Japan and I have a feeling the chicken I (soon to be used to) buy comes from the US. Thankfully, the bacon and pork are local or Canadian, the fish local, and I think the cheese is from Korea. Definitely changing my shopping habits.
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