EU madness

The bureaucracy monster behind a loaf of bread

Behind every loaf of bread is not only a lot of manual work, but also a lot of paperwork.(Bild: Matthias Dietrich)

It's hard to believe how much bureaucracy is behind a loaf of bread! Many bakers can hardly cope with the effort involved. Officials from the European Union are not least to blame for this misery.

Few things have such a positive connotation as the smell of fresh bread in the morning. But before the customer can bite into his crusty roll with relish, the baker has a lot of work to do - not least a huge amount of paperwork. Every ingredient, every work step has to be documented, filed and filed away. The industry's complaints about excessive bureaucracy are well known. The scale of the problem is best illustrated by a concrete example - in the form of a banal breakfast roll, for example.