Tenerife Magazine’s round up of some of the most interesting news stories of the week in Tenerife.
Winners at the World Cheese Awards 2011
Although it’s unlikely to be acknowledged in the Tenerife based Spanish press, the Eastern Canary Islands left the Western Canary Islands for dead at the World Cheese Awards in Birmingham this week with a total 19 awards in various categories compared to a paltry 3 from the Western Canary Islands.
Fuerteventura cheeses were the big winners with 7 bronze awards, 4 silvers and 1 gold. Lanzarote also performed well with 1 bronze, 2 silvers and a gold whilst Gran Canaria picked up 2 bronze awards and a gold.
Of the Western Islands, only Tenerife made any impact on the cheese world and what they lacked in quantity, they made up for in quality. Out of three awards, 2 were gold; the other was bronze. La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro picked up nothing.
Tenerife may not have won as many prizes but the island’s cheese-makers had the last laugh in the award stakes as the wonderful semi-cured smoked cheese from Benijos in La Orotava was voted the best of all Canary Island cheeses.
The best cheese in the world award 2011 went to France for Ossau Iraty which only just beat last year’s winner, Britain’s Cornish Blue.
A Controversial Visitor Comes to Tenerife
This week should see the arrival of Morgan, an orca who has been making world headlines recently.
Controversy has surrounded the fate of the 4 year old female who was rescued from the North Sea in 2010 where she was found apparently starving to death.
Since then Morgan has been nursed back to health in a Dutch dolphinarium and is now in a fit state to move on…and that’s where the controversy comes in. A Dutch court has ruled that to return her to the wild might prove too risky. Subsequently she is being transferred to Loro Parque in Puerto de la Cruz. It’s a decision which has angered animal rights activists who are demanding that Morgan should be released back into the wild.
However, the situation isn’t as clear cut as simply opting for what is the morally obvious choice between captivity and freedom…at least not where the welfare of the orca is the main motivation for any argument for or against release or continued captivity.
Nobody can state for certain what the outcome of releasing an orca that has been in captivity will be. The most famous case to date concerns Keiko the star of the movie Free Willy who, possibly as a romanticised consequence of the movie, was released into the wild to assuage public demand. Keiko died of pneumonia a short time after his release. Life, unfortunately, doesn’t normally tread the same path as that of a Hollywood movie.
This isn’t meant to be a comment on what is right and what is wrong regarding the future of Morgan, just an observation that the right course of action isn’t always as clear as it may seem.
And finally the TIT (This Is Tenerife) of the week award goes to”¦no-one
It’s got to be a first but we couldn’t find anyone worthy of the TIT of the week award. Sure there’s the usual round of reports about the authorities not paying their debts (this time to pharmacies) and wads of money being invested in projects that either don’t come to fruition or end up being demolished. Then there’s the unsurprising news that in the middle of a financial crisis, the south Tenerife railway has been suspended for the moment due to lack of funding. But we’ve mentioned these sort of situations before so TIT of the week is having a week off.
We’re sure somebody (or some body) will do something that”ll have our jaws hitting the floor again before too long. After all this is Tenerife.
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