You can see how warped I am as an accountant when I discovered a document called International Standards for Fruit and Vegetables LEEKS. My immediate question was: ‘What can accountants possibly write about leeks?’ At the bottom of the first page I saw it was written by the august OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. My second thought was I didn’t know that the OECD had anything to do with accounting standards.
More to the point, what standard would accountants need for leeks? I could only think of classifying the cost of bulbs as a ‘cost of goods sold’ or explaining a method of calculating the ‘cost of labour’ for weeding and picking. But an accounting standard would not be necessary for that unless the OECD were going crazy.
I sensed that the standards might be reaching wider than mere accounting when the document, on page 2, stated that the OECD is at the ‘forefront of efforts to understand’ subjects such as ‘corporate governance, the information economy and the challenges of an ageing population’. This was confirmed in the Foreword where I discovered that the document is ‘published to facilitate the common interpretation of standards in force by both the Controlling Authorities and professional bodies responsible for the application of standards …’
I wondered who the Controlling Authorities could be. And how they controlled leeks. No doubt with leek controllers or the leek police. I could not however imagine how leeks related to corporate governance or the information economy. Though, perhaps one of the challenges of an ageing population was to encourage them to eat leeks.
You can imagine how surprised I was, after ploughing through the definition of the leek varieties and their length, width, colour and production period, to learn that ‘Welsh onions or bunching onions (Allium fistulosum L.) are not covered by the standard’.
But it was only on page 10 of the standard that I discovered with relief, disappointment and amusement, this sentence:
“The purpose of the standard is to define the quality requirements for leeks after preparation and packaging.”
It nothing to do with accounting at all. I had wasted my time. My accounting brain cannot believe that standards exist outside of accounting.
P.S. I also found a 57-page document for International Standards on bananas which I decided not to read.