Tag: illegal

A piece on NPR about adulterated Olive Oil was shocking. This prompted me to do some research and reading. Bottom line, I learned that adulteration of olive oil is not something that happens now and then. It’s very common. It’s so common that much of the oil labeled Extra Virgin Olive Oil in your supermarket isn’t what it says it is. It is soybean, or canola, or hazelnut oil with coloring and flavoring added. Some of it is olive oil that is misgraded or diluted with other oils.

Real EVOO is expensive. If the oil is inexpensive there’s a good chance it’s fake.

Apparently there is a lot of fraud and little enforcement in the U.S. Operators will set up in a warehouse, mix up and bottle 10 or 20,000 gallons of oil, and disappear, all in a few days, leaving no trace to track them down.

The Italian flags, quaint Italian names, “Product of Italy”, “Produced in Italy” colorfully printed on the label is bogus. On top of the outright fraudulent olive oils, that aren’t olive oil at all, that are mixed up in an abandoned warehouse in South Philly, there are operators who are actually located in Italy, who import olive oils from all over the world in bulk and bottle it in Italy. So it actually was “produced” in Italy but it is not Italian olive oil.

Europe is much more strict about EVOO than the U.S.A. but even so, Italian growers watch their crops like a hawk, they escort their olives to the pressing mill, they watch their olives pressed and their oil loaded into their trucks and they take it home to bottle it. It never leaves their sight because of potential fraud. They go through that much trouble even in Italy.

All this is a bummer for me because I love olive oil. For me, it doesn’t have to be Italian but it does have to be real olive oil. The fraud problem explains why some bottles of “olive oil” I’ve purchased in the past were odd tasting and didn’t behave like olive oil.

For more about the problem:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12571726