2003-01-19 The reason for this is simple. In the UK, the gallon is legally defined as about 4.5 L. In the US, it is 3.8 L. If an American product states its contents as 1 gallon (3.8 L) it is illegal in the UK as the unit gallon in the UK can not be 3.8 L, it must be 4.5 L. So, an American company may leave the unit gallon off the label to prevent any type of problems with the authorities.
Elsewhere, the gallon is not a legal unit, but may appear as a supplemental unit under present EU directives. Because the gallon is not used in countries like the Netherlands, nobody cares what value is shown, US or UK or whether it is right or wrong. It only matters that the litres are correct. John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Simpson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, 2003-01-18 19:14 Subject: [USMA:24501] Re: Dollar stores >Of Han Maenen >We do have euro shops here. Generally they have SI only, but on American >products sold there you may well see dual units of course. American liquid units are illegal on product labels in the UK. Thus American labels may be legal in the Netherlands but illegal in the UK. It is ironic that UK and US people use (or did use) non-metric units but make each others units illegal.
