Have No Fear, the Duck Police are Here!

In an apparent effort to protect the vulnerable public or maybe the vulnerable cooks from carbon monoxide, earlier this summer the EU effectively outlawed Peking Duck. (No, I’m not making this up.)

OK, I admit that even I can occasionally be amazed with the depths to which a bureaucrat can stoop to impose his will. Scholar Bob Higgs summed up this phenomenon aptly in a recent piece when he noted that the continuing cry for drug prohibition, whatever merits be assigned to it, nevertheless represents “a deplorable social phenomenon that prevailed throughout America before, during, and after the Progressive Era – the war of self-righteous busybodies against the rest of us.” Some bureaucrats, particularly those in the European Union, go far beyond drug prohibition.

According to Liz Todd, reporting for the Mail Online:

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Basically some bureaucrats in Brussels, Belgium decided that only an “approved” oven may be used, no matter the tradition. I’m certainly no aficionado of Peking Duck, but I know a little bit about freedom. Can it really be true that inspectors are roaming all over London’s China Town placing tape over stoves to protect people from carbon monoxide? So now, even if I am aware of the ostensible danger, I cannot enjoy a dish freely prepared, at my request, by a vendor for my enjoyment?

Maybe there was an outbreak of deaths due to Peking Duck Oven Carbon Monoxide Poisoning? No. Not even close. Says the article:

Call me a conspiracy realist, but I think this blockquote contains a vital hint. The ovens are made in China. There was a brief period not that far back when every week contained a news item about some device or toy or something made in China that had to be banned, lest the recipients fall prey to the horribly low standards of manufacturing! And so, the circle is complete.

Apparently under pressure from the British public, who reputedly enjoy Peking Duck, the bureaucrats have been forced to backpedal. According to the Mail Online, a month after their overzealous ban, the bureaucrats “relented and agreed that as long as the ovens meet standard health-and-safety rules, they do not have to be CE-marked.” How generous of them! Now, the ovens can be used, as long as they are modified to the arbitrary standards put in place by the EU bureaucrats and are then certified by an approved engineer as safe.

This has been hailed as a restoration of sanity and a solution to the affront to freedom originally presented by the ban itself. But it is no such thing, and that is where the lesson for Americans and other freedom loving peoples can be found in this story. If a restaurant owner (or anyone else) must still get permission from the government to use equipment he or she otherwise legally owns, then the restaurant owner is still not free in any sense of the word. The situation is similar to the old constitution of the Soviet Union, which granted an impressive variety of rights to the Soviet people but included a clause empowering the Soviet government to abrogate those rights at any time. That clause, in particular, read: “Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of society or the state, or infringe the rights of other citizens.”

In other words, if the state didn’t like your freedom, well, so much for freedom.

I’ve but one request: Protect me from those who protect me from myself!