I submitted this yesterday morning, but the server seems not to have sent it out. It is another aspect of making net contents more confusing instead of easier.
A discussion in another forum turned up this example of tri-lingual net contents labelling: http://www.theofficedealer.com/mm5/graphics/product_images/1300/seo/Glad-78112-Recycled-Tall-Kitchen-Trash-Bag.jpg That discussion was about whether "mil" is 0.001 inches and a legal unit for trade (yes, US) or slang for millimeter (UK, and several Commonwealth nations). Look how messy this is with multiple abbreviations in different languages for inches and gallons. Permissive-metric-only would dramatically clean up this label as metric symbols are the same across all languages. Who does the tri-lingual really satisfy? *Does the French make it legal in Canada when the US gallon, not the Imperial gallon, is used? *Do Spanish speakers (in either the US or Mexico) really care how many gallons it holds? Does FMI REALLY believe this is perfectly clear and metric-only would be confusing? Maybe they should put the metric first (same for everybody) and then state the Customary in English only, perhaps with a "US only:" disclaimer.
