The Socialist Group in the Cabildo of Lanzarote has demanded immediate political responsibilities after it was discovered that the island institution mistakenly distributed castor beans, which are highly toxic, believing they were beans.
Castor beans contain ricin, one of the most dangerous natural toxins in the world. Ingesting just a few seeds can cause vomiting, bloody diarrhea, intense abdominal pain, dehydration, multiple organ failure, and even death within 36 to 72 hours. There is no antidote, and treatment is limited to medical support measures, making this episode a serious risk to public health.
Socialist councilor Benjamín Perdomo denounced that what happened constitutes “a negligence of enormous gravity that puts the health of citizens at risk and cannot be dismissed as a simple administrative error.”
According to the PSOE, upon realizing the error, the Agricultural Farm began sending text messages to farmers to recover and destroy the seeds, which, in their opinion, demonstrates that the institution itself was fully aware of the dangerousness of the error. However, the socialists criticize that the Cabildo has not issued an official statement informing the population “with total transparency” and guaranteeing their safety.
In the next plenary session, the Socialist Group will demand to know how many batches of seeds were distributed, how many farmers received them, and how many have already been recovered and destroyed, warning that transparency in this case is “unpostponable.”
The PSOE recalls that the person directly responsible for this area is Gladys Acuña, advisor to the president on agricultural matters, and therefore demands her resignation “immediately.”
“President Oswaldo Betancort cannot continue to look the other way. If he wants to demonstrate a minimum of institutional responsibility, he must dismiss his advisor or demand that she submit her resignation today. The opposite would be to assume this serious error as his own, which calls into question the credibility and rigor of his government,” Perdomo concluded.