The EU: killing its citizens and destroying rainforests

Craig Sams writes, in a letter to the New Scientist:

... In 1993 my company Whole Earth Foods launched a trans-fat-free spread, branded Superspread. Other manufacturers objected to our advertising: the Advertising Standards Authority banned it, effectively killing our product. We presented the ASA with the medical evidence, which was abundant 23 years ago. They accepted its validity but said we violated their code because we were “appealing to fear” by suggesting trans fats could damage your heart health. When Denmark banned trans fats the food industry replaced them with coconut and palm fats, and the EU was faced with a rapeseed oil glut, as that was the oil that was mostly hydrogenated. So the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation required rapeseed oil to be blended with diesel. That requirement overshot. So we are now deforesting Indonesia to grow palm oil to make up the quota for vegetable oil in diesel. If there is anything to be learned from this tragic fiasco that continues to cost tens of thousands of lives annually and blights many more with ill health, it is that agricultural policy should never trump health policy. The tragic fiasco of trans fats, letter to the 'New Scientist', 16 October

In short, the European Union couldn't care less about the health of its subjects, and helps destroy Indonesian rainforests. It keeps on doing it. And there are no mechanisms in place either to stop the insanity, nor to make the decision makers accountable, nor even to identify the decision makers, still less to get rid of them. That's why I voted for Brexit, and hope that this whole tragic experiment, which began so nobly, gets dragged behind the barn and killed with an ax.