Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/11/same-trucks-carrying-cooking-oil-were-used-to-carry-fuel.html
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Wasn’t there something like this a couple of decades ago in Spain?
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Food security and safety have been cornerstone issues for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who has linked them to national stability and called their successful oversight a test of a government’s ability to govern.
Reminds me of stories that, if crops were destroyed by a flood, it meant the king had lost the Mandate of Heaven and should be deposed/executed.
In effect, this meant the government had to maintain good irrigation/flood infrastructure.
(closest I can immediately find is the legend of Yu the Great from 1045–771 BCE)
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There was an incident with contaminated cooking oil in Spain in 1981, I’m not 100% clear on whether it was a storage problem or a cost-optimizing the inputs problem.
Tricresyl phosphate has a nasty habit of showing up in edible oils on occasion; when either by accident or design some lubricating oil gets mixed in. The 1959 case in Morocco was probably the most dire.
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Part of my job is selling commodities into various countries. You’d be surprised what the vessels carry prior to the liquid or dry bulk cargos. Caustic chemicals transported right before your crude degummed soybean oil? Solid urea right before your northern spring wheat? Well, alright then!
The important step is the thorough cleaning the cargo hold gets before loading the next cargo. The vessels we charter get inspected by an independent surveyor of our choice before loading. The freight company knows this, and actually cleans the hold really well, as they would be responsible for penalties if they can’t load the freight because it would be contaminated.
All a long way of saying: I wouldn’t be surprised if the same doesn’t happen with trucks, and it sure sounds like they skipped the cleaning processes.
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We had investigative reports in the US about trucks going cross-country, carrying garbage in one direction and produce in the other. That was decades ago.
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