environmental chopping block

[Puellam audiam]

Hi, everyone!

Not fully understand the following paragraph, and need your clarification:

So when a report surfaced in December that European Union health regulators had placed wood-oven pizza on the environmental chopping block, Italy gave their EU members a collective holler of "hands off!"

What is environmental chopping block, and why "hands off"?

Thanks for your attention!

 

[Thomas Tompion]

It means that the health regulators said the pizzas were unhealthy or bad for the environment and should be banned (have their heads cut off!). The Italians were not happy about this and told the other members of the EU to leave the pizze alone.

The chopping block is where things get cut, either in the kitchen (thank you Puellam), or, in medieval times when they wanted to remove your head.

Hands off means don't touch.

 

[Puellam audiam]

chopping block is the one we use in kitchen to chop things?