- EU and Commission Regulation 2257/94 states that bananas must be "free from malformation or abnormal curvature."
That is not true.
The original UK publicity was a joke article in, I think, the Daily Mail and unfortunately people did not realise they were being taken for a ride. Boris Johnson trotted it out repeatedly as one of his campaign lies.
The Directive is a
classification scheme which classifies bananas as falling into one of three different "quality classes", much the same as eggs are classified as small, medium and large. Apples are classified as Extra, Grade I and Grade II.
The reason for the classification regulations is that a grocer usually buys fruit blind, without seeing it, and therefore needs to know what he is getting. Previously, there were many different grades used by the different producing countries and the traders asked the EU to bring some clarity by defining common EU standards. Once a fruit has landed in the EU it "loses" it producing country's classification and is classified into one of the three EU classifications.
Banana classifications have the same name as apple classifications, namely Extra, Class I and Class II. Extra are the highest quality bananas and only these have tight limits on their shape. The two lower quality grades are Class 1 and Class II and both are permitted to deviate from the shape norms.
It all sounds eminently sensible to me. Customers are very picky and will reject malformed or tiny bananas. Were I to be a grocer I would want to know the quality of what I was buying and paying for, and not pay premium prices for poor quality fruit.