On October 1 a report in a local newspaper revealed that certain Italian brands of baby food, which are sold here primarily in pharmacies, contained the meat of animals which had been artificially fattened with estrogen hormones. Shortly before, a court order in Bologna had placed a ban on these foods because the estrogen content was thought to be hazardous to health. At the same time, it was reported that ten thousand tons of estrogen-treated veal had been recently imported into Greece from France and other EEC countries.
The reaction to this news was immediate. Butchers at the Central Market in Athinas Street confirmed the report by stating their belief that veal containing estrogen had been imported from abroad for many months. The price of boneless veal at once fell from 400 drachmas per kilo to 250 drachmas. INKA, the Institute for the Protection of the Consumer, promptly called for a nationwide five-day boycott of veal starting on Monday, October 6.
On October 3, the Ministry of Agriculture announced that imports of veal and beef from France, Italy, Belgium and Holland were banned, pending tests to discover how harmful meat treated with estrogen might be to health. A report from abroad, however, stated that it would take 500 pounds of estrogen-treated meat to equal the estrogen content in a single contraceptive pill. The announcement from the Ministry went on to say that no such hormones had been found in sample inspections of imported meat; that all meat carried veterinarian certificates; and that systematic inspections were carried out, especially on meat coming from large industrial beef-raising units, which would be the most likely sources to make use of hormones.
Etymologically speaking, the word “estrogen” held η ο secrets from the educated Greek reader. The sex hormone’s name comes from the Greek word oistros, meaning sexual heat in females, from which our word “hysteria” derives. If this at first caused amusement among male readers, they were brought up sharply by the warnings of Judge
Dellaporta of the Bologna court who stated that estrogens were given to males convicted of sexual crimes in order to tranquillize them. Evidence that male children fed on estrogen-treated baby food began developing breasts was supported by Dr. Palmieri, a Roman pediatrician. So the hysteria which began in the Athens meat market spread quickly to the home — and even to the bedroom.
While the Athenian family was reluctantly willing to forego imported veal and beef (and chicken as well since it, too, was coming under suspicion), it was quite unprepared to face the evidence provided on October 5 by George Zevelakis, General Secretary of the Hellenic Agricultural Union. He stated in an interview that Greece had become a testing ground for hormone-treated fertilizers manufactured in Europe. “For two years,” he said, “we have been consuming thirty thousand tons of fruit and vegetables fertilized with chemicals imported from Europe.” He went on to say that it was a pity that the Ministry of Agriculture did not have the sophisticated equipment or means to analyze thoroughly the chemical content of what we import.
On the same day, Undersecretary of Agriculture Grammatidis attempted to clarify the situation by announcing that the suspension of imports of meat was taken only to support the interests of local producers and to give them an opportunity to have their products absorbed onto the local market. This, indeed, was convincing imasmuch as meat producers in Thessaly in mid-September had complained that imported meat was interfering with the sale of their domestic products.
In support of this policy, Grammatidis stated emphatically that domestic meat could be con
sumed by the public without fear since local animals were fed on either natural grasses or fodder that was strictly controlled by health authorities.
The average Greek family, whose menu now lacked veal, beef and chicken, was asked to swallow the ingenious idea that Greek producers could be innocent while those of the more “advanced” countries were guilty. After all the years of labor spent on getting into the EEC, Greek consumers were suddenly not so eager to join the “Estrogen-Eating Community”. Otherwise, they were reduced to a diet of fish and to animals that do not so readily respond to hormone treatment, such as goat, lamb, rabbit and game birds.
The boycott beginning on October 6 was a success. Less than ten kilos of veal were sold in the Athens Central Market that day, while the price of the domestic product, such as lamb and kid, rose to 480 drachmas a kilo.
The problem of controls, however, remained. On October 13 George Ioannidis, who has been nine years in the Veterinarian Control Service at Evzones on the Yugoslav border, said that the Service’s major equipment was the eye and the nose; that is, to test the condition of meat by looking at it and smelling it. Although the certificates by foreign veterinarians were checked and re-checked, it was impossible to prove their good intent. By mid-month it was already being rumored that hormone treatment on meat was such a lucrative business in Europe that pharmaceutical firms were giving meat producers free estrogen.
There was also the problem of restoring public confidence. On October 16, the Panhellenic Union of Butcher Shop Owners announced that they would close their establishments permanently on November 3, if the government was not able to reassure consumers of the safety of their produce.
As it is usual to conclude that Greece is the precursor in all civilized matters, good or ill, it may be well to point out that it produced the first man ever to have grown breasts. The soothsayer Tiresias was turned into a woman for his having seen Artemis naked at her bath, if we are to believe the diagnosis of prehistoric Theban gynecologists. Or it may mean that the commercial production of estrogen was invented in ancient times and later lost. In order to reassure the male population of Athens, however, it should be said that Tiresias remained a woman for only seven years, after which time he was changed back into a man — or went off the pill — whichever explanation seems the more likely.
Athens, A to Ζ
THOSE who are familiar only with the Latin alphabet are surprised to find that the Athens telephone directory “A to Z” is not such an unwieldy tome, containing only 800 pages. As it happens, “zita” appears rather early in the Greek alphabet and this directory is followed by four more hefty ones before completing “omega”.
Athens has been growing so rapidly in the last few years that the publishing of telephone books is like the painting of suspension bridges: no sooner is the work complete than it is time to start all over again. The new, impatiently awaited “Alpha to Zita” directory was therefore greeted with thanksgiving when it came out early this year and the imminent publication of the second volume, “Ita to Lamda”, replacing the now antiquated 1976 edition, printed when Athens had half a million fewer inhabitants than it has today, was eagerly awaited last month. Alas, it was not to be.
The Telephone Company (OTE) has been plagued with problems lately. Telephone “pirates” in various parts of the city have been plugging their equipment into the central networks. Subscribers picking up their receivers have been startled to hear popular songs instead of the dial tone, and strange voices advertising commercial products and making political speeches. A few months ago the company’s elegant, new, still incomplete headquarters in Maroussi was the center of riots over a new, adjacent and very inelegant municipal cesspool. There have also been difficulties with certain employees who have been selling telephone outlets on the sly at outrageous prices in those parts of the city where lines are in great demand.
The problems of OTE have been financial, as well. The company is expected to declare a deficit this year for the first time. This is due in part to the Government’s decision to cut its investment program from thirteen to eight million drachmas. In order to prevent the company from completing on-going projects, the Government recommended that OTE seek a million-dollar loan from abroad. The Government generously agreed to guarantee the loan against possible default.
If on-going works included the publication of new directories, they were, if not prevented from completion, at least temporarily arrested. On September 18, the Director of OTE revealed that 2,400 names beginning with “kappa” had been omitted from the volume about to be circulated and that instead they had been replaced with an equal number of names beginning with “gamma” which somehow had found their way out of the “A to Z” volume published earlier. The result is that over 150,000 copies of the directory have been withdrawn at the last moment and at the cost of millions of drachmas.
The Telephone Company can take heart in the thought that if this misfortune causes default on a foreign loan, the Government is standing by to guarantee it. Meanwhile “Alpha to Omega” remains a purely theological matter at OTE, and for telephone subscribers it remains strictly Athens “A to Z”.
