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The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

theguardian.com

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Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#41

Post by divbyzer0 »

steve19 wrote: post #32
cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure (sorry for not backing it up in the first place): http://thefreethoughtproject.com/doctors-groups-deny-microce... Only days after a list of articles claiming no link with pesticides were published, here a link to one of them: http://www.sciencealert.com/argentinian-report-says-monsanto... I'm quite close to some people in academic virology and they also were not to keen on calling for a Zika outbreak.

A study published in The Lancet found a strong connection between Zika and microcephaly in fetuses in French Polynesia http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

The main point of the article is that scientific & regulatory community was led by profit and not in the "spirit of disinterested inquiry".

From the article: The original study on which the oil theory is founded, by Dr Juan Tabuenca Oliver, was published in the Lancet

Also from the article: they concluded that, without any doubt, the contaminated foodstuff was tomatoes, and it was the pesticides on them that were responsible for the epidemic. The organo-phosphorous chemicals would indeed cause the range of symptoms observed by clinicians.

Getting published in The Lancet does not prove anything. eg MMR vacine\autism.

The article is well worth a read.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#42

Post by edu »

lovemenot wrote: post #39
zb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just in Spain, and was told that prior to the financial crisis much of the olive oil produced in Italy and Greece was made from olives grown in Spain. (Spain is a massive producer of olives.) After the crisis they stopped exporting olives and started bottling their own oil, which was the cause of the shortage in supply of extra virgin oil from e.g. Italy that led to organised crime getting into the fake olive o…

So, a result of the crisis was that Spain decided circumstances had changed such that foreigners' cash was needed less than before? Your facts may be right (I don't know) but if so, Spanish authorities made a basic economic error in that decision.

No, businessmen realized it's more profitable to process the olives and sell the oil than just selling the olives.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#43

Post by SixSigma »

pipio21 wrote: post #21

It was not a scandal, it was criminal negligence, with lots of victims. My hyphothesis after talking with chemists in the field is that someone reused a container tank for synthetic oil in order to carry rapeseed oil. The rapeseed oil dissolves synthetic oil easily. They probably thought nothing would happen because of ignorance on the part of the man that made it. He probably used water in order to clean the origina…

> it was criminal negligence, with lots of victims

wow, that's scandalous !

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#44

Post by slr555 »

It is interesting that that within the last few days the NY Post has published an article on the food supply that continues to promulgate this myth. The book author they cite is also blaming olive oil for the tragedy in Spain. It is unfortunate that even with better data available publishers continue to quote myth as fact.

http://nypost.com/2016/07/10/the-truth-behind-how-were-scamm...

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#45

Post by mikeash »

cies wrote: post #30
jnbiche wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like that the symptoms supposedly caused by the "Zika virus" is more likely to be a result from food by contaminated by pesticides/herbicides. You're making a claim here that pretty radically departs from scientific consensus. Do you have any background information on where you read this/how you determined this?

Sure (sorry for not backing it up in the first place): http://thefreethoughtproject.com/doctors-groups-deny-microce... Only days after a list of articles claiming no link with pesticides were published, here a link to one of them: http://www.sciencealert.com/argentinian-report-says-monsanto... I'm quite close to some people in academic virology and they also were not to keen on calling for a Zika outbreak.

The top story of The Free Thought Project's Environmental News section is about chemtrails. The front page of ScienceAlert currently has a story about morse code being discovered on Martian dunes. Do you have any sources that aren't obvious crackpots?

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#46

Post by Thimothy »

willvarfar wrote: post #5

Are particular politicians implicated? Why does no Spanish TV station do a documentary on this scandal? What is the situation and dynamics of the 'free press' in Spain today?

You have to realize that when this happened, as the article says, Spain was just out of a dictatorship. Back then, freedom in the press was... Poor, at least. Specially, there was still a lot inertia going with "The press must follow the government line".

In my opinion, it was as the article says, right or wrong, somebody found the "canola oil" hypothesis and it was really convenient: with the same shot, the recent and weak vegetable production was protected and a competitor for the national olive oil was smashed.

Today, I guess that there is in nobodies interest in Spain to move the issue. Everybody is completely convinced of the "canola oil version", and the vegetable production is a sizeable part of the Spanish economy. Saying the contrary in Spain in polite company it's the kind of thing that would label you as a tin-foil conspirance theorist.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#47

Post by cies »

jnbiche wrote: post #36
cies wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure (sorry for not backing it up in the first place): http://thefreethoughtproject.com/doctors-groups-deny-microce... Only days after a list of articles claiming no link with pesticides were published, here a link to one of them: http://www.sciencealert.com/argentinian-report-says-monsanto... I'm quite close to some people in academic virology and they also were not to keen on calling for a Zika outbreak.

OK, you've implied or linked to some significantly different claims here: 1. That there is no Zika outbreak / outbreak of Zika-like symptoms (this seems irrefutably wrong and as far as I know even the typical conspiracy theorist sites aren't claiming this much). 2. That the symptoms of Zika are in fact caused by the organo-phosphate pesticide Pyriproxyfen (Zika has been a recognized viral illness just like others e.g…

> outbreak of Zika-like symptoms

The symptoms are witnessed, sure. But are they caused by Zika; I think not. Zika is around for a long time, and seems to be relatively harmless (as in: no obvious symptoms). Therefor I do not speak of Zika-symptoms.

The sources are merely by Google'ing, I did not do proper background checks. I did my own research on this some time ago and talked it though with a virologist I know; she was surprised that I knew about the absense of link and that they are also coming to that conclusion (though I do not know if her department made an official statement on that).

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#48

Post by gutnor »

douche wrote: post #15
nextos wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are wrong. This scandal is incredibly well-known in Spain. It's gotten massive press coverage throughout the years. In fact, most people that used to use cheap cooking oils switched to olive oil after the scandal. (For those who are not familiar with the matter, the scandal involved using chemicals on industrial-grade rapeseed oil to remove dyes and re-sell it to consumers.)

> switched to olive oil after the scandal Do you actually have olive oil in your olive oil? In the U.S., most of the olive oil for sale is either misgraded or adulterated[1] [1] http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/

Yes, but more importantly, olive oil is staple food and Spanish people know the real taste of olive oil.

Part of the problem in the US and other countries is that marketing successfully managed to convince people that the taste of cheap generic oil was the sign of quality and all the potent characteristic of virgin olive oil were undesirable.

Rapeseed oil nowadays start to get sold a bit more. But as rapeseed, not as colza. Any 30 something or older spaniard would never buy colza oil. That's how much that scandal has impacted the industry, and everybody has seen someone with the malformation due to the tainted oil (which may not be the real reason according to this article). That would commercial suicide if your brand was somewhat mixing its oil because of that scandal.

A last point is that Spain is really producing a lot of the stuff and is utterly inept at making a lot of money on it. Contrast that with Italy that buy Spanish oil and sell it at a premium just by labelling it "Italian Olive Oil". Actually that's another aspect of the US problem with oil. "Italian Olive Oil" is an extremely powerful label, one that, conveniently, has little legal meaning.

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#49

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I don't see any links whatsoever to hard evidence in the article. The only thing close are a book and an article published in Spanish and French, respectively, and seemingly no translation or availability in English bookstores. Yet everyone in the comments here are accepting it as fact, almost as readily as people accepted the tainted oil as fact.

It's funny how human heuristics prevent critical thinking, even after reading an article about the lack of critical thinking.

One of the most obvious pieces of evidence this article could have included is "The Spanish toxic oil syndrome 20 years after its onset: a multidisciplinary review of scientific knowledge." [1]. In the abstract you will find the following:

Attempts to reproduce the condition in laboratory animals have been unsuccessful, and no condition similar to TOS has been reported in the scientific literature.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240833/

Re: The Spanish cooking oil scandal (2001)

#50

Post by zb »

lovemenot wrote: post #39
zb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just in Spain, and was told that prior to the financial crisis much of the olive oil produced in Italy and Greece was made from olives grown in Spain. (Spain is a massive producer of olives.) After the crisis they stopped exporting olives and started bottling their own oil, which was the cause of the shortage in supply of extra virgin oil from e.g. Italy that led to organised crime getting into the fake olive o…

So, a result of the crisis was that Spain decided circumstances had changed such that foreigners' cash was needed less than before? Your facts may be right (I don't know) but if so, Spanish authorities made a basic economic error in that decision.

No, you make more money exporting value-added products (like olive oil) than raw ingredients (like olives). Basic economics says you want to move higher up the value chain, and that's what (I'm told) they did.

Of course this caused further problems for Greece and Italy, which were already not in good shape.

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