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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'
by willvarfar 10y ago
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?
- nextos 10y agoI 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.)
- ethomson 10y agoI'm sorry if I misunderstand you, but your comment quite suggests that it has _not_ gotten any press if the takeaway is to switch oils. Are you suggesting that you still see evidence of people responding to the misinformation reported in this article? And that the news is still reporting this as fact?
- nextos 10y agoNews does report toxic oil as a fact. But most people are familiar with other hypotheses, including the Bayer pesticides one. I've seen compelling first-hand evidence that oil was the culprit, but I'm open to other hypotheses too.
- willvarfar 10y agoThe article says it wasn't cooking oil, and that cooking oil was the scapegoat coverup. Politicians let people die by not tackling the root causes. And, scarily, it says that pesticide use in Spanish fruit is still high, and that a similar mass poisoning recently in Mexico was also covered up and another non-cause blamed.
- maus42 10y agorecently when the article was written (which was in 2001)
- douche 10y ago> 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/ http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/
- harperlee 10y agoIf I recall correctly Spain is the biggest exporter of olive oil, with Italy and Tunisia somewhere behind (and in fact most of the Italian exports are just Spanish oil, Italian branded). It makes way less economic sense to adulterate the olive oil in Spain when it is not a gourmet import, but a staple daily produce. On the pricier premium virgen extra oil there has been some fraud, nonetheless (in Spanish: http://m.europapress.es/sociedad/consumo-00648/noticia-ocu-acusa-nueve-marcas-aceite-oliva-enganar-consumidor-20121025122232.html http://m.europapress.es/sociedad/consumo-00648/noticia-ocu-a...).
- zb 10y agoI 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 oil business. So there's every reason to think that Spain in particular is awash in genuine olive oil.
- lovemenot 10y agoSo, 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.
- edu 10y agoNo, businessmen realized it's more profitable to process the olives and sell the oil than just selling the olives.
- marvel_boy 10y agoThere is no free press in Spain. Period.
- fasteo 10y agoI am a Spaniard living in Spain and this is a quite amazing statement. Do you mind elaborating a bit ?
- klaasn 10y agoMost major newspapers are actually insolvent and are kept afloat by the political establishment. Editors of major newspapers are often replaced when they do are too critical of the government. When a couple of months ago there was a critical article on the new York times the writer was rapidly dismissed just to prove the point. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/europe/spanish-writer-says-el-pais-column-canceled-after-comments-on-media.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/europe/spanish-wr...
- fauria 10y agoYes, there is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
- fasteo 10y agoThe "aceite de colza" scandal is very well known in Spain.
- willvarfar 10y agoYes, and this article is explaining how that was a scapegoat coverup... My question is asking why no free press nor free police investigates the real cause of the mass poisoning.
- pvaldes 10y agoThe article does not "explain", just hypothesize. This is not the first time that a commercial war based in vegetable products occurs in Europe. There is for example the recurrent episodes of vandalism by french productors against spanish trucks. They stop trucks and trow the contents in the road by force causing serious economical loses. Is practically a national tradition. Still happening in 2015 and gendarmerie does not much to stop it. Sometimes politicians need to find quickly a scapegoat. In 2011 Germany accused spanish cucumber productors of contamination, and refuse to accept the clean results of the tests done in origin as true (yes, we have laboratories also). They were forced to retract later when the real origin of the outbreak was found in Germany, but spaniard producers lost a lot of money by the bad press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_o... What I'm trying to say is that his kind of articles aren't new and must be taken in its time context. Often there is an economic or political interest hidden that expires quickly. This article in the guardian points to tomato and was, curiously, written when EU wanted to reduce the subsidies to tomato producers. (Tomato was a strongly subsidized product in EU since 1978, but the system changed in 2001).
- lottin 10y agoAs far as I know the "conventional wisdom" in Spain is that the cause was cooking oil. The other theory was reported in the mainstream media at the time but apparently it was dismissed as faulty science (see here: http://elpais.com/diario/1984/12/15/sociedad/471913201_850215.html http://elpais.com/diario/1984/12/15/sociedad/471913201_85021...).
- Thimothy 10y agoYou 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.
- pvaldes 10y agoThey did several of course: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/informe-semanal/informe-semanal-30-anos-envenenados/1094189/ http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/informe-semanal/informe-s...