[kwhitefoot]

I wouldn't eat Lurpak butter if you paid me. I agree that more competition would be good but not at the expense of destroying the Norwegian policy on agricultural self sufficiency.

Anyway Lurpak is from Arla which occupies the pretty much same sort of position in Denmark as Tine in Norway.

The crisis was not really a great disaster and at the time there really were not a lot of people calling for deregulation.

And as for the complaints about food being expensive, well to some extent this is a national sport just like Brits complaining about the weather, that is, not to be taken seriously. I'm English and have lived here in Norway for 30 years, almost half my life now so I well acquainted with both.

If food were too expensive it would be impossible to sell. Even the cheap supermarkets here carry half a dozen brands of extra virgin olive oil for example; and the variety of bread available here in even the smallest supermarket outstrips most British hypermarkets, etc.

[digi_owl]

> The crisis was not really a great disaster and at the time there really were not a lot of people calling for deregulation.

Yep, it just fit the opposition party line of EU good, independence bad. And the press jumped on it as a "look how shitty our nation is" story.

Never mind that the previous months had seen the very same press lauding a high fat diet...

In the end it was pretty much a media created tempest in a teapot.

[tormeh]

I didn't follow the mainstream press at the time and didn't even notice it happening. Had no butter problems at all. I only noticed it after the fact, because relatives talked about it.