The Olive Oil Scandal
A good friend gave me a subscription several years ago to The New Yorker, and at the time I didn’t know how lucky I was. First, I loved the cartoons. A couple magazines later, I got pulled in by some of their excellent travel and political writing. Later, the fiction issues pulled me in and introduced me to authors I had never read before. In no time at all, I was totally addicted.
Now, when The New Yorker arrives, Adventure Man and I fight to see who gets to read it first! Often he wins; he skims it. He knows I will take too long getting through it.
It was the New Yorker magazine who informed me about the great olive oil scandal.
I love olive oil. I only use other oils in baked goods, where the olive oil might give an odd taste, we use olive oil almost exclusively. Or so I thought.
In the August 13 Issue of the New Yorker, Tom Meuller starts like this:
On August 10, 1991, a rusty tanker called the Mazal I docked at the industrial port of Ordu, in Turkey, and pumped twenty-two hundred tons of hazelnut oil into its hold. The ship then embarked on a meandering voyage through the Mediterranean and the North Sea. By September 21st, when the Mazal II reached Barletta, a port in Puglia, in southern Italy, its cargo had become, on the ship’s official documents, Greek olive oil. It slipped through customs, possibly with the connivance of an official, was piped into tanker trucks, and was delivered to the refinery of Riolio, an Italian olive-oil produce based in Barletta. There it was sold—in some instances blended with real olive oil—to Riolio customers
Between August and November of 1991, the Mazal II and another tanker, the Katerina T., delivered nearly ten thousand tons of Turkish hazelnut oil and Argentinean sunflower-seed oil to Riolio, all identified as Greek olive oil.
Riolio’s owner, Domenico Ribatti, grew rich from the bogus oil, assembling substantial real-estate holdings, including a former department store in Bari. He bribed two officials, one with cash, the other with cartons of olive oil, and made trips to Rome, where he stayed at the Grand Hotel, and met with other unscrupulous olive-oil producers from Italy and abroad. As one of Italy’s leading importers of olive oil, Ribatti’s company was a member of ASSITOL, the country’s powerful olive-oil trade association, and Ribatti had enough clout in Rome to ask a favor—preferential treatment of an associate’s nephew, who was seeking admission to a military officers’ school—of a high-ranking official at the Finance Ministry, a fellow-pugliese.
However, by early 1992 Ribatti and his associates were under investigation by the Guardia di Finanza, the Finance Ministry’s military-police force. One officer, wearing a miniature video camera on his tie, posed as a waiter at a lunch hosted by Ribatti at the Grand Hotel. Others, eavesdropping on telephone calls among Riolio executives, heard the rustle of bribe money being counted out. During the next two years, the Guardia di Finanza team, working closely with agents of the European Union’s anti-fraud office, pieced together the details of Ribatti’s crime, identifying Swiss bank accounts and Caribbean shell companies that Ribatti had used to buy the ersatz olive oil.
The investigators discovered that seed and hazelnut oil had reached Riolio’s refinery by tanker truck and by train, as well as by ship, and they found stocks of hazelnut oil waiting in Rotterdam for delivery to Riolio and other olive-oil companies.
The investigators also discovered where Ribatti’s adulterated oil had gone: to some of the largest producers of Italian olive oil, among them Nestlé, Unilever, Bertolli, and Oleifici Fasanesi, who sold it to consumers as olive oil, and collected about twelve million dollars in E.U. subsidies intended to support the olive-oil industry. (These companies claimed that they had been swindled by Ribatti, and prosecutors were unable to prove complicity on their part.)
You can read this entire fascinating article here: Tom Meuller: Slippery BusinessGive yourself plenty of time. It is an article well worth reading.
There is another good reference here: The Great Olive Oil Scandal from PalestinianOliveOil.org
Investigators have gathered evidence indicating that the biggest olive oil brands in Italy — Bertolli, Sasso, and Cirio — have for years been systematically diluting their extra-virgin olive oil with cheap, highly-refined hazelnut oil imported from Turkey. [1]
A 1996 study by the FDA found that 96 percent of the olive oils they tested, while being labeled 100 percent olive oil, had been diluted with other oils. A study in Italy found that only 40 percent of the olive oil brands labeled “extra-virgin” actually met those standards. Italy produces 400,000 tons of olive oil for domestic consumption, but 750,000 tons are sold. The difference is made up with highly refined nut and seed oils. [2]
EVEN THE BIGGEST OF THEM WILL MISLEAD THE PUBLIC…
“In 1998, the New York law firm Rabin and Peckel, LLP, took on the olive oil labeling misnomer and filed a class action suit in the New York Supreme Court against Unilever, the English-Dutch manufacturer of Bertolli olive oil. The firm argued that Bertolli’s labels, which read “Imported from Italy,” did not meet full disclosure laws because, even though the oil had passed through Italian ports, most of it had originated in Tunisia, Turkey, Spain or Greece. “Bertolli olive oil is imported from Italy, but contains no measurable quantity of Italian oil,” according to court documents.”
Curezone lists manufacturers of adulterated olive oil and marketers of the same oil. It is disgusting. We pay high prices for junk-olive oil. From Curezone.com/forums
The Guilty
Below is a list of known adulterated brands and dishonest distributors with links to information about their cases.
Adulterated brands of extra virgin olive oil
with country of origin
Andy’s Pure Olive Oil (Italy)
Bertolli (Italy)
Castel Tiziano (Italy)
Cirio (Italy)
Cornelia (Italy)
Italico (Italy)
Ligaro (Italy)
Olivio (Greece)
Petrou Bros. Olive Oil (California)
Primi (Italy)
Regale (Italy)
Ricetta Antica (Italy)
Rubino (Italy)
San Paolo (Italy)
Sasso (Italy)
Terra Mia (Italy)
Distributors caught selling adulterated olive oil
Altapac Trading
AMT Fine Foods
Bella International Food Brokers
Cher-Mor Foods International
D&G Foods
Deluca Brothers International
Gestion Trorico Inc.
Itaical Trading
Kalamata Foods
Les Ailments MIA Food Distributing
Lonath International
Mario Sardo Sales, Inc.
Petrou Foods, Inc.
Rubino USA Inc.
Siena Foods Ltd.
Vernon Foods
So who do we trust? How do we know that we are getting a quality, unadulterated product? This is fraud in an international scale!
“Can You Help Me Get to Bangladesh?”
I have a dilemma. I don’t know how to handle it.
I carry small bills with me, because I am often asked for money. I keep it so I always have money to give to the people who help me get groceries to my car, the people who deliver propane, people who give good service – I don’t mind. Part of the blessing of having work is the obligation to pass that blessing along to others. We know that God Almighty knows where there is real need, and he moves us to give where giving is needed; he gives us a little shove in our hearts.
Yesterday, a well dressed man with a steady job told me he wants to go home to Bangladesh to see his parents. Could I help him?
I understand about aging parents. I’ve made a few trips myself. I totally understand what it is like to be far away when crises strike. We have always had funds set aside for emergency trips, and, by the grace of God, we haven’t had to dip into those funds often.
“How can I help you?” I asked.
“I need money,” he responded.
Money for a ticket to Bangladesh – that’s not small change. Along with that thought is the thought that were I to “help” this man, word would get around, and I would have many people knocking on my door for serious help with funds.
I don’t think he wants the kind of help I could easily give – showing how to set up an account and contribute to it faithfully, letting the money accumulate until you reach your goal. I don’t think he wants to do what my parents did with me, and what we did with our son – matching funds. (You save up half and we will match your savings dollar for dollar.) He wants an outright big gift.
In our church, we sing a song that says “Freely, freely, you have received, Freely, freely give.” I’ve always believed that with all my heart, it is like a magnified spiritual Locard Exchange Principal especially for blessings; what you have received you give, and it comes back to you doubled, tripled, magnified.
We tend to give larger charitable donations to organizations that make the money work hard – Medicins Sans Frontiers, African schools, our church fund. I consider a ticket to Bangladesh a relatively large charitable donation, large especially for one individual, one individual who is well employed.
So I ask for your prayers for clear guidance. I am not feeling that shove in my heart.
Community
Jeremiah is one of the great prophets of our Old Testament. The Wikipedia article on Jeremiah tells me that his name in Arabic is Eremiya. The problem with being a prophet is that not everyone wants to hear what God tells you to say. Jeremiah spent time in jail for telling people what they didn’t want to hear.
God told Jeremiah, “You will go to them; but for their part, they will not listen to you”.
Today’s reading in the Lectionary has this verse from Jeremiah. My blogging friend Kaos asked me why I care about Kuwait when I am only an expat, passing through. When I saw this verse in the reading for today, as the Jews are being sent into exile in Babylonia, I knew for myself the answer:
From Jeremiah 29 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Wherever we find ourselves – it’s up to us to make the best of our lives. There are reasons for every expat to care about Kuwait and what happens to Kuwait. Kuwait belongs to the Kuwaitis, and 67% of the population is “expat” or “visitor” or “laboror”(whatever lable you choose.) As long as we live and work side by side, we are a community, diverse and conglomerate, but all wanting to live in peace as best we can. Kuwait belongs to Kuwaitis, and the lives we lead as individuals make up a community that belongs to us all.
Visitors, Not Residents?
From yesterday’s Arab Times:
The General Immigration Department of the Ministry of Interior is studying a proposal to replace the term ‘resident’ — the status given to expatriates working in Kuwait, reports Al-Watan daily. The daily added this has been done to ‘fight’ attempts by international organizations asking Kuwait to grant citizenship to expatriates who have been working in the country for a long time. Meanwhile, a reliable source said ‘visitor’ will replace the term ‘resident’. The source also said the General Immigration Department has stopped receiving applications for self sponsorship after noticing an increasing number in applications over the past few months. According to knowledgeable sources the Assistant Undersecretary for Citizenship Affairs Major-General Sheikh Ahmad Al-Nawaf has issued instructions to take into account the demographic structure of the country while issuing work permits because Kuwaitis account for only 33 percent of the population compared to 67 percent expatriates.
Calling all us guest-workers “visitors” is just a dumb idea. Call us guest-workers, call us workers, but if you call us “visitors” then you run into problems with folks who are just coming in for a VISIT, i.e. visitors.
I have always preferred being a resident. When I come into Qatar or Kuwait and all the lines are long except the GCC lines, I can always take a chance that the guards will think I am married to one of you when I step into the GCC line. If the person at the desk says I am in the wrong line, I can always look confused and say “I am a resident!” It has worked – well, most of the time. 😉
This issue is hand-in-hand with the school issue. Times are changing, old traditions are not being observed, and the blame is falling on foreign influences. It’s kind of like that train has left the station – if you want to go back to old ways, you’ll have to get rid of automobiles, computers, mobiles, supermarkets, and most of all, that demon of all forces of modernization – television.
The Taliban managed to reinstate old traditions, and in doing so, to take Afghanistan right back to the stone age. It was not just the women who suffered – men who didn’t want to wear beards, men whose hair was too long, men who wanted to listen to music, men who wanted to discuss politics – all were punished, some were killed.
The real challenge here is how Kuwait, as a modern nations state with a lot of money, is going to move with the modern world, not against it.
A Moment for Mirth
As we complain about traffic, write passionately about the environment, and wonder what on earth is going on with our government(s) (What? you thought it was just Kuwait?) and even worse, as we start to talk about the good old days, back in the day . . . whoa! Oh no! We are starting to sound . . . like our parents!
So, for a moment of fun, take a look at a song from a very old musical, The Music Man, set over a hundred years ago, where he talks about the new phenomenon corrupting the youth of the country. Watch how the parents get all worked up. And remember – it is all part of his agenda.
“Committee” Cracks Down on Education in Kuwait
This is a small article from yesterday’s (October 16) Kuwait Times:
MOE Cracks down on foreign schools:
Kuwait: The council of undersecretaries at the Ministry of Education chaired by Minister of Education Nouriya Al-Sabeeh will discuss after Eid holidays the demands of the committee about the negative effects of some traditions to the Kuwait society.
(Excuse me? What committee is that? What negative effects of some traditions? Could you make this any more opaque? Or is the goal to have us ask these very questions?)
It continues:
The committee demands to stop foreign schools from making foreign trips until the regulations to control these trips and stop mixing girls and boys together have been issued. The committee also demands that foreign schools inform the ministry about any parties they intend to have and the agenda of that party to ensure that the nimistry is present and in order to make sure that the school abides by the MOE’s regulations.
The committee also asked the ministry to implement a plan for segregation among boys and girls in the high school classes, as it is more important than segregation at universities. The committee noted that segregation should start in school activities as a preliminary step an foreign schools should be instructed by this through a circular to be distributed to them.
Comment: Let’s face it, foreign schools have strange foreign ways, including the mixing of boys and girls. They believe it creates healthier relationships down the road when people learn to get along with all kinds of other people at a very young age.
Even now, fewer western families are coming to Kuwait because of the education situation. It is often discussed among expat groups that the quality of education available in Kuwait is slipping dramatically.
Of those expat families that do come, many are choosing to home-school to avoid the problems developing in the local schools, even the “foreign” schools. It seems to me that local people who send their kids to the better “foreign” schools do so because these schools have a reputation for providing a better level of education than the public schools – is this correct? It also seems to me that if the “foreign” schools are doing better than the local schools, perhaps it is a good idea to keep letting them do their thing, rather than regulate them too closely?
I saw a group of home-schooled kids on the beach recently, having PE. They were playing volleyball, big kids, little kids, boys and girls all together. They were having a wonderful time. They were polite, respectful and modestly dressed. There wasn’t a sign of romance, just good, healthy fun as they played.
A friend who teaches in one of the local schools tells me of little Abdul, whose pencil fell on the floor the other day and he said to her – his teacher – “Pick that up.” She just stood there, half in shock that he would speak to her – or to anyone – so disrespectfully. Abdul looked up at her with those charming big eyes and grinned. And said “You’re not going to pick it up, are you?” She laughed and said “No, you are!” and he did. Little Abdul is learning some strange foreign ways.
Some of you went to foreign schools, either here in Kuwait or elsewhere. What do you think?
Ozymandias: Nothing beside remains
This is one of my favorite poems. I learned it as a child, and didn’t understand it, but liked the exotic loneliness it evoked. I could hear the wind whistling across the empty sands, feel the grains on my cheek – so very different from my home in Alaska, and yet – not so different. In Alaska, the wind blew cold, and the grit against my cheek was snow! The memory of these ironic words lives in my heart.
The words come back to me, now and again as we stand amidst remains of complex, abundant civilizations that are now lifeless stone and rubble.
Ozymandias
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
If you read through the entire poem, you are challenged to tell us about a poem that YOU still remember, and why. 😉
Blessings of Eid and Eidiyya
(*Note for non-Muslim, non-Kuwaitis – Eidiyya is money given for Eid, mostly to young children, but I have a few grown up women friends who tell me their Daddy still gives them money for Eid, the big holiday at the end of Ramadan.)
We had a yen for French food last night, and were at the restaurant, finishing up a fairly mediocre meal. We were enjoying watching all the couples and families, all dressed in Eid finery. Many of the women literally sparkled – gold threads woven into scarf or hijab, clothing beaded or glittering. . . we were like plain little quail, surrounded by swans, but that was fine with us, kept us below the radar as we ate our dinner.
As we came in, we had been warned that the credit card machines were not working, but that wasn’t a problem for us, we tend to carry cash, just keeps things simpler.
So we are waiting for our change, when a very good looking family comes in and sits at a table near us. The husband and wife are dressed beautifully, not glam, but well tailored, well fitted, expensive clothing, and they have five beautiful children with them, youngest maybe 10, up to maybe college age. As they are about to order, the waiter reminds them that the charge machines are out of order and the restaurant will accept only cash tonight.
The distinguished looking man sits in a stunned and embarrassed silence. The faces of his family are all turned to him as sunflowers to the sun, waiting. Then his wife says “Don’t worry, I have 10KD here, you can have it.” (10KD would not have taken care of this family!) The oldest girl jumps in: “Dad, I have my Eidiyya with me! You can have it!” and each of the children start digging in their pockets and purses for money to help their Dad out.
Our change came back and we were leaving. I don’t know if they stayed, if the Dad accepted any of the money as a loan, but my own heart was warmed – as I am betting his was – that his family would jump to help him out, so that he would not be embarrassed and so that the family could have the meal they planned. How proud he must be of his beautiful family, and their beautiful hearts. How blessed he must feel!
I have seen in my own life how God can take the most awful circumstances, even trivial events, and use them for great good. We’re all cash-strapped now and then, but God used this embarrassment to demonstrate to this man where his greatest blessings abide – in his own home.
Directions to Northgate Mosque, Seattle (Idriss)
Today I have had many hits – over 20 – on a post I wrote a year ago about the Northgate Mosque. I am guessing that people in Seattle are looking for directions to the mosque, to celebrate the Eid. Here is a map:
I must be doing something wrong, but if you click on the blue print, it will take you to a Google Map that shows you how to get to the Idriss Mosque in the Northgate Area of Seattle.
Eid Mubarak!
I was totally caught by surprise! I thought we were going to have a very very quiet Friday, last day of Ramadan, but awoke to hear an unusual and continuous amount of traffic in the middle of the night.
“I think the Eid started,” Adventure Man said groggily. “I got an Eid message.”
“I don’t think so, ” I said, based on absolutely nothing, “it’s not supposed to start until Saturday.”
In all our years living in the Middle East, I have never known an Eid to come early. I have known Eids to wait a day – even two – while the fasting seemed endless, and people dragged themselves to get through one more day, and then one more. But this totally caught me by surprise!
(This photo from a fabulous blog: Astropix.
Blessings of Eid to all my Muslim friends! Blessings! Blessings! May you always have enough! May you be surrounded by friends and family who love you! May your hearts be full of gratitude to God, for all these blessings, known and unknown!
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