1995-2003
Widespread deception in subsidy applications of Unilever Research Vlaardingen (URV) and their partners AFSG (previously named ATO)-WUR, TNO Nutrition and University of Amsterdam
Key-players at Unilever: The engineer Huub Lelieveld (Unilever Research Vlaardingen), Professor Stanley Brul and senior vice president Leendert Wesdorp with the blessing of global R&D Food director Ed Veltkamp, who stimulated an entrepreneurial climate. To obtain subsidy the industry had to show commitment, which often did not exist. Non existing commitment was made visible by creative bookkeeping.
A) Selection from collaboration of Huub Lelieveld with Paul Bartels (ATO) Novel ‘non-thermal’ technologies
1) Pulsed Electric Fields: Subsidy (>1 M€) was acquired twice (1rst nationally and 2ndly EU) on same equipment, the second time it was known the equipment was ill-designed and not properly functioning. To get the EU money, however, it needed to be “sold” to ATO and a wall of the ATO building had to be broken down to get it in. The running nickname was “Trojan Horse”. It was never used.
2) The intimate relation of Huub Lelieveld and ATO (WUR) in the acquisition of subsidy projects led to nepotism: The creation of jobs for his son and son in law at ATO
B) Collaboration of Prof. Stanley Brul with Roy Montijn (TNO)
3) Deception in subsidy applications by Prof. Stanley Brul (Unilever Research, University of Amsterdam) and Dr. Roy Montijn (TNO)
Example the big EET-Genomics project (submitted in 2002). Industrial sterilisation processes rely on the control of integration of the proper dynamic time and temperature treatment. SB & RM pushed the development of a DNA-method for sterility testing, which is sheer nonsense. The sensitivity of a DNA method even in 2015 was at best 1000/ml under favourable conditions whilst the legal requirement is a 12 D reduction for Clostridium botulinum. The industrial equivalent is absence of spoilage by very heat resistaht spores in 10,000 litre: a difference in requirement of > 1010 x sensitive!!! Besides you still need to control process temperature and time. These and other subsidy applications were not withdrawn despite my strong internal objections because the bonuses in research were dependent on the amount of subsidy acquired. My boss put the Director External Research Jan Maat (and later TIFN director) under pressure to sign dubious subsidy applications. Jan Maat knew my objections but signed subsidy applications Money, not integrity, was the driving force.
I do not know whether the subsidy providers SENTER, NWO, STW, EET, lacked the competence, thought it was all right (after all Unilever and TNO are big names) or were also part of the conspiracy, their bonus may also have been dependent on the facilitation of subsidies of industry.
Anno 2016 the Top Institute Food & Nutrition-programme Microbiology at Wageningen still suffered from wrong assumptions and deception ("persisters", ispore germination) to motivate a programme of mostly societal irrelevance whilst missing opportunities like bacterial spore damage.
4) Deception in the outcome.
Scientific results were oversold, manipulated, conclusions in abstracts did not match actual results. I have asked Unilever and University of Amsterdam to rectify one example, a “brilliant” publication from 1998. The scientific integrity commission of the UvA led by our former minister of justice Hirsch-Ballin was not willing to correct this mistake, because it was longer than 5 years ago. The major co-author Prof. C.T. Verrips and former Chief Scientist of Unilever did not know about this deception at that time and wrote me it is never too late to rectify.
3-10 -2015 "Dit is inderdaad heel lang geleden, maar ik deel je mening dat het nooit te laat is fouten te herstellen. Ik wil me daar best voor inzetten."
The University of Amsterdam and Unilever were not willing to correct this incompetence/fraude. http://www.tersteegmc.nl/publications/voeding-en-gezondheid/75-specific-cell-wall-proteins-confer-no-resistance-to-nisin-upon-yeasts-cells-64-4047-4052-1998
5) Lack of critical refection: Prof. Martijn Katan (WUR & Free University) and Dr. Onno Korver, laundering own scientific failure/laziness (missing H.M. Sinclair (1956))
Korver, O., & Katan, M. B. (2006). The elimination of trans fats from spreads: how science helped to turn an industry around. Nutrition Reviews, 64(6), 275-9.
https://www.foodlog.nl/artikel/levensmiddelenindustrie-heeft-waarheidscommissie-nodig/
PS Why do I ran into all this shit. I believe Mother Universe does not play dice and she even smiles when she plays the synchronicity/coincidence game. I seem to have Forest Gump features.There is not only coincidence in my life, but it is double, triple and even more. AND, AND, AND, AND
Deadly Transfats
The bonus of my boss at Unilever Leendert Wesdorp was dependent on subsidy fraude AND he was by the way the project leader of Paddington, the sweet bear, the covert operation to make killing margarines transfat free. It would have been a perfect cover-up had not Unilever overplayed their cards telling that Becel was already transfat free in 1962 in a juridicial published advertisement case by the RCC (Advertisement Code Committee)
AND I found this verdict by chance looking up my own Unox verdict and battle about E-numbers in 2009.
AND instantly realised that Unilever could have made transfat free margarines as early as1962. 33 years earlier than operation Paddington. AND over a MIILLION people had not died unnecesarily for cardiovascular disease.
AND Marjan Rots (retired Patent Attorney) gave me the reason in 2016 at a Lions symposium in Utrecht. Transfats were damned cheap allowing penetration of margarines in developing countries without chilled distribution. Unilever needed them for "sustainable" growth.
Deadly Probiotic Case
I discovered instantly the failure of the monitoring committee of the deadly probiotic trial in Utrecht in 2009 just by reading the article in the morning paper.
AND my thesis of 1989 contained already the reason of the deadliness
AND I got help of professor Ronald Meester, who actually wrote "Toeval, het pesudoniem van God" (Coincidence, the pseudonym of God).
AND My supervisors in Nijmegen both applied for the job of professor in food microbiology in Wageningen in 1985 but their procedure was only meant to clear the way for their internal nominee, Frans Rombouts. The appointed chemist with no understanding of microbial ecology became advisor of Winclove after his retirement, the company of the deadly trial twenty years later. I applied for professor in food microbiology in Wageningen. I came in 3rd not being able to present my vision in a seminar. A Wageningen man got the job, Marcel Zwietering and nr second another Wageningen man Tjakko Abee became professor.
I gave a 2 h seminar Preservation and Risk Perception at Wageningen University from 2009 - 2011 for international students Food Safety Management. It was stopped because the students could not cope with the truth, Martine Reij told me later.
By the way, AND Emmo Meijer, my rescuer, got his PhD degree at the group of Stouthamer at the Free University, where I did my first minor in Microbiology in 1981. Emmo also played soccer during the lunchbreaks. I showed a picture of him sitting next to my later supervisor Henk Smit at the seminar Emmo gave at Inholland in 2016 supporting the development of my "Food Research & Sustainability". Emmo's passion is soccer. He even became chairman of Fortuna Sittard. I was no soccer star, I even got the nick-name "the Duck" at Microbiology .I was good in chess beating the microbiologists of the local chess competition with 13-0 and I put a theoretical mathematical idea iabout a flaw in the determination of the Minimal Inhibitory Concentration of my supervisor and the pharmacohemistry group in my thesis. AND Not realising it would be independently published by Ronnie Lambert, a Unilever collegue and friend, 20 years later. Ronnie also developed a mathematical approach to destroy most pseudo-synergy patents of Unilever and his competitorsin the detergent area . Naturally, he also had to leave.
Bless Wageningen, their food research and their denial that they cannot deal with the realisation that they do not know what they do not know. I, the Ugly Duck, the blackened toad/path, am willing to train them in the art of not knowing. and show the way,
