If you think the U.S. government is meddlesome and intrusive, the EU will knock your socks off.

Lately, EU bureaucrats have set their sights on health and safety in hotel kitchens, and their resulting regulations, as ever, put a metaphorical stick in the eye of the principles reasonableness and common sense.

The issue? Dogs in homes. Specifically, homes that also rent out rooms to vacationers and feed their guests breakfast each morning during their stay.

Thanks to the EU, these bed and breakfast owners may soon have to choose between the family business and the family pet.

Owners of bed and breakfasts have been banned from keeping dogs in their kitchens under a European Union ruling that could see hundreds of family-run businesses close.

Officials claim that the animals pose a potential health and safety hazard to guests’ food. However, bed and breakfast owners vowed to close rather than turn out the family pet.

Oliver Letwin, the former shadow home secretary, called the legislation “barking mad”.

Someone far smarter than me once said that the problem with legislators is that they’re always legislating, and the problem with regulators is that they’re always regulating. That stands to reason, of course. If they aren’t, they literally are failing to do their job. The question of whether it’s a good idea to legislate or regulate never seems to enter their mind.

The result: Stupid, wasteful, insulting, freedom-sucking mandates like this one.