Toxic Oil Syndrome
I was at Victoria Market the other day and saw a stall vendor move
one of the non-halal chickens into the halal chicken tray after someone
had purchased the existing one. Being an atheist, I don't much care
whether I eat that which has been forbidden by the gods or not but some
people would care. And I think everyone should have the right to make an
informed decision regarding their purchase. Even if I think they are
wasting their money. I'm looking at you, Apple Macintosh users.
Now I have to admit, I could have confronted the butcher/vendor but I did not mostly because I did not expect it to achieve anything more than perhaps her temporarily moving it back. But she was doing the Wrong Thing. Hardly scandal of the year, and sometimes Wrong Things are too appealing to refuse, but the Wrong Thing nonetheless. I would be astounded to hear that the person who bought that chicken went home and got smote by their god for violating his arbitrary rules regarding slaughtering some living things but not other living things.
And yet, the right to make an informed purchase is far more important than we would normally assume. In Spain there was some kind of embargo on olive oil - I don't know the details, look it up. And what was happening was people were importing some other kind of oil (rapeseed perhaps?) that was not fit for consumption, but could be made "fit for consumption" if you bathed it in chemicals first.
So they did exactly this, then claimed it was regular old olive oil and people bought tons of it and cooked it, ate it, used it to lubricate their sex, whatever you normally do with olive oil. Everything was great, the vendors were making money, circumventing an embargo, presumably no one who bought the olive oil was unhappy with it... and then... the consumers of the oil began to express symptoms of "toxic oil syndrome" (not a pre-existing condition, but one that doctors made up to describe the bullshit that was happening to them).
The main problem here is that each individual in the chain has done Nothing Wrong. The consumers thought they were buying olive oil, used it as olive oil. The importers bought the rapeseed oil expecting it was going to be used to clean engine parts. The retailers cleaned the oil in the way they thought would remove all of its dangerous constituents, and then sold it as "Olive Oil" expecting consumers to not know the difference (consumers didn't by the by). Had they sold it as "chemically-cleaned rapeseed oil" then they would have done Nothing Wrong either, and blame would shift to the consumers who substituted questionable product for olive oil.
Informed purchases are more than just "something nice" that all businesses should do. It should be the law. In a lot of cases it is the law. But then what is with "extra light" olive oil (it has nothing to do with 'extra virgin' or 'low fat' by the way), meat pies made out of pig snout and camel lips, soft drink with 16 teaspoons of sugar per glass, or "cage-free" eggs?
Our government really needs to pull its finger out of its arse and address the lawlessness of labelling and consumer confusion.
Now I have to admit, I could have confronted the butcher/vendor but I did not mostly because I did not expect it to achieve anything more than perhaps her temporarily moving it back. But she was doing the Wrong Thing. Hardly scandal of the year, and sometimes Wrong Things are too appealing to refuse, but the Wrong Thing nonetheless. I would be astounded to hear that the person who bought that chicken went home and got smote by their god for violating his arbitrary rules regarding slaughtering some living things but not other living things.
And yet, the right to make an informed purchase is far more important than we would normally assume. In Spain there was some kind of embargo on olive oil - I don't know the details, look it up. And what was happening was people were importing some other kind of oil (rapeseed perhaps?) that was not fit for consumption, but could be made "fit for consumption" if you bathed it in chemicals first.
So they did exactly this, then claimed it was regular old olive oil and people bought tons of it and cooked it, ate it, used it to lubricate their sex, whatever you normally do with olive oil. Everything was great, the vendors were making money, circumventing an embargo, presumably no one who bought the olive oil was unhappy with it... and then... the consumers of the oil began to express symptoms of "toxic oil syndrome" (not a pre-existing condition, but one that doctors made up to describe the bullshit that was happening to them).
The main problem here is that each individual in the chain has done Nothing Wrong. The consumers thought they were buying olive oil, used it as olive oil. The importers bought the rapeseed oil expecting it was going to be used to clean engine parts. The retailers cleaned the oil in the way they thought would remove all of its dangerous constituents, and then sold it as "Olive Oil" expecting consumers to not know the difference (consumers didn't by the by). Had they sold it as "chemically-cleaned rapeseed oil" then they would have done Nothing Wrong either, and blame would shift to the consumers who substituted questionable product for olive oil.
Informed purchases are more than just "something nice" that all businesses should do. It should be the law. In a lot of cases it is the law. But then what is with "extra light" olive oil (it has nothing to do with 'extra virgin' or 'low fat' by the way), meat pies made out of pig snout and camel lips, soft drink with 16 teaspoons of sugar per glass, or "cage-free" eggs?
Our government really needs to pull its finger out of its arse and address the lawlessness of labelling and consumer confusion.
posted by sean at
14:27
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