Opinion Forbidden fruit
Following a bug panic, the EU becomes a no-flies zone.
Following a bug panic, the EU becomes a no-flies zone.
Brussels has gone bug-eyed after discovering that shipments of mangoes from India teem with stowaways — Oriental fruit flies that can apparently attack European salad crops. The European Union is treating them as illegal aliens — all 325 species — and has banned the import of mangoes, two kinds of squash and colocasia leaves, in which they travel. The ban is causing unrest in Britain, which had been looking forward to the Alphonso season, and the House of Commons will debate the matter on Thursday.
Indian mangoes have been banned earlier by the US, Australia, New Zealand and Japan on the same issue, but this ban is raising the temperature because it may extend to December 2015. The loss of two whole mango seasons would harm trade between India and Europe. India has threatened to take the EU to the World Trade Organisation, accusing it of arbitrariness and banning without discussion.
Bio-safety is indeed important and a lettuce plague in Europe would be disastrous, particularly compromising the BLT sandwich, one of Britain’s national treasures. However, one cannot help but notice that no such plague has ever struck, though Indian mangoes must have been going over at least from the Seventies. That was when the Indian grocery industry caught on in London, pioneered by a certain Lakhubhai Pathak, who would become Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s bugbear decades later. The lettuce still flutters cheerily in the breeze, the rocket still flourishes, Nigella Lawson still drizzles them with this and that and everyone still gawps at her. So why was the EU in such a hurry? Never mind, Indians will pig out on mangoes this season as domestic prices fall. And Europeans can have their Brussels sprouts. As much as they want. They deserve it.
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