Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Regulation isn't made just by health/safety perspective, but includes cultural, social and others.

For example, Katsuobushi is the core part of Japanese food but it seems that exporting to Europe is difficult due to EU regulation. Another example in Japan would be K-car.

As a Japanese, I never want to give up Katuobushi for improving health. I suspect that maybe oppositely, European people also has food or culture that banned from other country .

https://www.nippon.com/en/views/b01723/



The article you linked makes it rather clear that the reason for banning imports has nothing to do with culture but with the carcinogens in the product. The Spanish factory uses a safer smoking process.


Wasabi is impossible to get in the USA, my understanding was that this was because of Japan's rules rather than those if the USA. We just have horseradish with green food coloring in the USA.


It's not impossible, it's just expensive to import and difficult to store. Higher end sushi places would usually have it. Now there are at least two farms in the US producing it that I know of, one in Washington state, and another in Half Moon Bay, near San Francisco, and there's even some retail distribution now in SF.


That is very exciting! My old karate instructor owned a sushi restaurant and I got the strong impression that the mob looked poorly on attempts to export. He may have been exaggerating.


I think Germany and the Netherlands have some similar vehicles to the K-car, but not sure they are the same from a regulation point of view


Some Kei-cars were and are sold in Europe, but they are regulated the same as any other car, rather than having specific tax and regulatory advantages like they do in Japan.

This also means that the European variants don't have to meet the kei-car regulations regarding size, engine capacity or power output, so some of them are a bit bigger or have more powerful engines.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: