It all began with a simple e-mail from a Massachusetts technology worker to a few friends.
But it has become a worldwide internet storm that has some people believing that canola oil is poisonous, has been used to create mustard gas, and has caused mad cow disease.
The cyberspace controversy has the Canola Council of Canada working overtime to correct the misinformation, and has caused the Massachusetts worker to disconnect his old office phone and switch to a secret new number.
“I can’t believe this crazy …,” said Rodney Flynn, who works for Lucent Technologies.
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“This has been traveling all over the freaking world. It’s just a dumb-
ass thing.”
Flynn’s and the canola industry’s woes began in mid-2000, when
Flynn went onto the worldwide web to find out where canola oil comes from.
He went to a common search engine, called Ask Jeeves, and found a few websites that discussed the health consequences of eating canola oil.
Websites can be easily and cheaply established by any person virtually anywhere in the world. Many, such as the ones discussing the alleged dangers of canola oil, contain information from various sources and are often written by people with no specialized training in nutrition.
False claims
One such website contained a litany of false health dangers from canola, such as “cloudy vision, constipation with stools like black marbles, hearing loss, skin tears from being bumped, lack of energy, hair loss and heart pains.”
It also attributed many serious digestive diseases to canola oil.
The site claimed mustard gas, which killed thousands in the First World War, was made from rapeseed oil, which it said was the same as canola oil.
None of these claims is valid, according to nutritionists. No agency polices the internet to ensure that information on websites is accurate.
However, Flynn didn’t know that. He became alarmed by what he read, so he copied the information and sent out an e-mail with it to a handful of friends, telling them to avoid canola oil for the sake of their health. Unfortunately for him, his name, e-mail address, phone number and the name of his company were included at the bottom of the e-mail.
One of his friends forwarded
Flynn’s e-mail to someone else, and from there it spread around the world. Soon Flynn began getting dozens of phone calls and e-mails from all over the world from people worried about the risks of canola oil, and also from canola industry people furious he was circulating false information.
He told whoever he could that all the information came from another source, that he wasn’t an expert, and people should disregard the e-mail and do their own research. But it was too late. The genie was out of the bottle.
After being deluged with calls,
Flynn changed his workplace phone number.
The Canola Council of Canada, also facing a flood of calls, set up a section on its website to counteract the claims in the rampaging e-mail.
Council spokesperson Dave Wilkins said he has been answering dozens of calls a day from worried consumers. He has also tried to neutralize the claims about canola that are shooting around the internet by replying with accurate information.
The Western Producer has also received many e-mails asking questions about the possible dangers of canola.
One, from a man in the Philippines whose wife is pregnant, asked “Is canola oil safe for human consumption?”
The canola health scare is so widespread that it has ended up on an urban legends website, which details false stories that float through society and get embedded in human consciousness.
“What we have here is a bit of truth about a product’s family history worked into a hysterical screed against the product itself,” says an account on the site, which can be found at www.snopes2.com.
“There is no earthly reason to give any credence to this rumor…. Canola oil is not the horrifying product this widely disseminated e-mail makes it out to be, nor has the FDA turned loose on the American public a health scourge worthy of being named one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
“In other words, it’s a healthy oil. One shouldn’t feel afraid to use it because of some internet scare loosely based on half-truths and outright lies.”
Wilkins said the canola health scare panic appears to be subsiding, but officials are still working to correct misperceptions.
Flynn is trying to keep his head low and hopes the storm dies down. He said he has learned a lesson about how dangerous a seemingly harmless e-mail to a friend can be.
He still doesn’t know which of his friends sent the message out into the cyberworld. None of them will admit it. He’s amazed at the chain of events that followed his quick, simple research.
“Nobody knew what canola oil was. I just wanted to find out.”
Flynn says his curiosity is now satisfied.