Prize-winning drop scones are as much part of the Women’s Institute as twin-sets and pearls but now bakery competitions have become the latest tradition to fall foul of Brussels bureaucrats.

New EU regulations have banned the consumption of cakes and scones entered at country fairs, preventing contestants from enjoying their winning entries.

The Scottish Women’s Rural Institutes (SWRI) — the Scottish equivalent of the Women’s Institute — has ordered contestants at shows to destroy all cakes submitted immediately following competitions.

In future only bite-sized versions of traditional favourites, such as Dundee cakes and Victoria sponges, will be made, to cut down on waste. The EU directive has been enshrined in law as part of the Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations. It states that food produced for display purposes, containing fresh ingredients such as eggs, butter and cream, should not be eaten to avoid possible food poisoning outbreaks.

However, Lynda Logan, a member of the Rylstone Women’s Institute in Yorkshire, where members thought up the naked calendar fundraising stunt that inspired the film Calendar Girls, starring Helen Mirren, said the rules took the biscuit. “It’s very strange to have a regulation like this when we are being urged to conserve food and resources,” she said. “If it was me I’d eat it first. My trouble is once I start eating cakes I can’t stop and it’s not good for the figure”

Sheila Gillon, housewives convenor of the SWRI said the rules were deterring people from entering baking competitions.

“They just don’t want to watch all this food being wasted,” she said. “There are hundreds of cakes at the big shows. It certainly deters me from making big cakes. I won’t be making any more clootie dumplings.”

She added: “These shows are a great tradition and an important part of what we do. It is heartbreaking when you have just won a prize and you can’t even take the cake home to show it off or share it with the others.”

So great is the intensity of competition for prizes that members often spend years honing their recipes and days preparing the perfect example to win a prize certificate.

Marion Davidson, chair-woman of the SWRI said they had no choice but to comply with the regulations.

“Most federations have a show every year or once every two years,” she said. “At the national competition we took a first step by deciding that instead of making a Dundee cake, we would make mini

Dundee cakes. We are a traditional institution, and these things are done in a very traditional way, but with these new rules, we have to rethink.”

Betty Gough, a member of the SWRI Fife Federation, said she was horrified by the waste: “I was making a pecan pie for the federation show and it suddenly hit me that only a mouthful of that pie would be eaten. When I walked into that hall at the show in May, it just made me so cross, knowing all this food was going to be thrown away .

“This made me look very carefully at the vast amount of food in the various competition categories, multiply it by the number of federations throughout the country and realise what a waste of food it is.”

The SWRI, which celebrated its 90th birthday last year, introduced home-baking competitions 80 years ago.

The events rose to prominence during the lean years of the second world war when they were used to supplement meagre food rations. Cakes and pastries were shared or taken home after competitions.

The SWRI — one of the largest women’s organisations in Scotland — is divided into 34 federations that broadly follow county boundaries. Today, the average age of members is about 60, and membership stands at 25,000 — about half what it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

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