Who benefits from the crime? A few days after the first international meeting on vanilla was held in Paris, a report on the French channel TF1 announced the withdrawal from the market of tubs of Haagen-Dasz vanilla ice cream due to a high level of ethylene oxide. considered carcinogenic, metagenic and reprotoxic. Ethylene oxide is used in the protection of foodstuffs and animal feed for its fungicidal and bactericidal qualities. It has been banned in the European Union since 2011.
It goes without saying that Madagascan vanilla is concerned by this affair which risks destroying all the efforts made by the State to restore vanilla. A real blow of jarnac which perhaps has links with the underhand maneuvers orchestrated by certain people precisely to undermine the initiatives of the State. Just reactionary acts devoid of any patriotic sense. If vanilla is banned in Europe, it’s a whole sector, thousands of people who will drink the cup. And of course the state will lose a large part of its revenue.
Serious assertions accompanied by defamatory accusations have even been made against the Minister of Industrialization, Trade and Consumer Affairs. None of this could be accidental. As proof, Malagasy growers and exporters do not even use ethylene oxide to protect vanilla. Vanilla has been exported for more than half a century and it is now that Europeans are discovering this anomaly.
Fortunately, vanilla is also exported elsewhere. In particular in the United States which buys most of the production. And in the United States, no withdrawal from the Haagen-Dasz ice cream market has been made for the simple reason that ethylene oxide is perfectly authorized. For the moment, there is no reason to make a dish of it. US customers ensure the purchase of production.