Reply #15: We do the same dumbassery over here

[charlie]

There's a guy in Florida who grows a strain of tomatoes he calls Ugly Ripes. Unlike the pink rubber balls sold in most US markets, these taste like real ripened tomatoes. Customers love them. But, as the name says, they're misshapen, scarred, and don't have uniform color. So... because they don't meet Florida standards for shape and color and could therefore "hurt" the industry's reputation, he's been prohibited from exporting them to other states. Some years he's had to dump tens of thousands of pounds of these tomatoes grown in anticipation of the quality board relenting on the ban. Idiocy.