SPAIN

About 15 years ago I was in Spain as a tourist. I forgot why I went to look at the farm called La Tenienta. Maybe I had heard stories about possible fraud. I do not remember it.
What I remember now is this:
I came unannounced at this farm and entered a small office.  I have waited for quite a long time to be able to speak to the manager. After –lets say- half an hour he came out of his office and asked me what I wanted. I wanted to see the farm.  He said: you can walk to the back of the farm and ask for Mr. Angelo. This is what I did, but of course I did not ask anything as long as I did not see anybody.  I saw pepper plants that had a lot of white spray-residue on the leaves.  I took some leaves and had them analysed in Holland. I remember that there was a lot of copper on it. It may be that a little copper was allowed, but certainly not so much.
I walked on and came to a field of carrots. Carrots grow slowly and in those days it was difficult to keep weeds out od them. From my non-organic neighbour in Holland I had learned that carrots were easily to keep clean of herbs: especially the grasses one can keep out with a chemical at all times. The other weeds, the dicotyl weeds, are a little more difficult. Those you can spray when the carrots and weeds are much bigger.
This information came to my mind when I walked through the carrots of La Tenienta.
I saw quite a bit of weeds, but never graasy weeds, always dicotyl weeds.  And there was no trace of a weeding machine that had worked the earth. How strange !
Back in Holland I decided to write a report and send it to the Bio-Dynamic Organisation. I sent it to Germany.
What I do remember is that about 2 or three months later I made a telephone call to these people and asked what had been the result of their check.
This man ( Herr Dr. Breda was his name) answered: I went to have a look at this farm last week and I found nothing.
Last week !!
I was angry. Why did he wait so long before going there ?

Later on I heard that the controller in Spain, a German man called Obermaier was part of the fraud.  Probably nothing happened with my complaint, for one year later there was a documentary on German t.v. called: “The organic lie.” This documentary did a lot of harm to good and honest farmers.

In the beginning of 1993 I made a telephone call to this Bio Dynamic organisation in Germany, and guess what: Herr Dr. Breda and Mr. Obermaier were still working for them !!