By Socrates Tsichlias

The mad cow scare was only the first in a series of food scandals to follow: dioxins in olive oil and chickens, hormones in pork, traces of poisonous pesticides in fruit and vegetables, heavy metals and toxins in fresh fish.

The numbers and statistics were mobilized after every scandal to be served up to the horrified masses. People always hope that if the experts are right about the legal limits, they will once again have escaped the danger.

Scientists specialized in the appeasement of the masses, joined by fearless politicians who are experts in crisis management, give us sedative injections with arguments such as: “You have to eat two barrels of mayonnaise in a week in order to be affected by the contaminated sunflower oil, so… no problem.”

They usually tell us 99 truths and one lie. That is, they forget one crucial detail: From Chernobyl radiation to the last trace of pesticide, nothing really kills one on the spot. These substances rather invade our body and have an accumulative effect.

Greece was once again caught with its defenses down. But that is old news. Apart from the checks and the deficient institutions, apart from the lack of staff and the insufficient labs, more worrying is the fact that the consuming public is fed with foodstuffs that are often produced, manufactured and supplied by unscrupulous individuals.

The businesspeople and giant companies, intoxicated with the accomplishments of technology and science, and dedicated maximizers of profit, contaminate food, forget to monitor, take dangerous risks.

Unless a different morality is imposed on the food market, no monitoring mechanism will be enough to save us.