A report in Daily Telegraph yesterday indicated that 4 out of 5 bottles of olive oils with the “Made in Italy" label are mixed with cheap Spanish, Tunisian and Greek oil, citing an ongoing investigation by different police agencies in collaboration with Italian agriculture trade group Coldiretti. Italy exports 250 thousand metric tons of oil every year, but imports total 470 thousand tons. Last year oil imports jumped by 100 thousand tons, prompting authorities to look into the fraud.
Italians and the foreigners worldwide are fooled into thinking they are buying olive oil from the world's most celebrated producer, writes La Repubblica the full translation of which you may find it at http://el-gr.facebook.com/
The well-respected national Daily exposes the Italian oil mafia through an investigation by State Forestry Department and the Guardia di Finanza, in collaboration with Coldiretti . Four out of ten bottles of oil sold in supermarkets tasted of mold in a study by UNAPROL Coldiretti and Symbola, the three independent agencies The Italian agri-mafia reportedly do not press olives anymore- they simply transform, manipulate, deodorize, aromatize and lastly but importantly import. Hundreds of thousands of tons of low cost oil produced in the Mediterranean basin is rebottled by these companies, giving it a false Italian identity.
‘There are a dozen big companies some of them are well-known- that formed a cartel of oil. Through a subtle commercial fraud they deceive the consumers. They control prices and the market. Earlier, these well-known Italian companies used to press olives in frontaios (mills)- now there are only silos- tanks filled with oil from the olive groves of Andalusia, or Tunisia’, says the report, adding that ‘a beautiful Italian label takes them to the shelves of supermarkets.’
‘The agro-mafia bosses purchase foreign mixtures sometimes for less than 25 cents a pound. Then they mix them, deodorize them and put them on the market at inflated prices, € 2-4 a kilo. In this investigation, Customs reconstructed, ton by ton, a sophisticated system of imports and exports: a web of "inflows" and "outflow" imports.’
‘Take the example of oil made in Spain passed off as Italian extra virgin oil. At the supermarket the first price is € 3. The first national survey on the quality of olive oil sold in Italian supermarkets had disastrous results. Of twelve samples from the shelves (of the best selling brands) collected and analyzed in the laboratory, almost half were musty. The organoleptic tests showed serious defects such as rancidity and heating.’
‘The mixtures come from several places including Jaén, a city in Andalusia in South of Spain. The province is an olive giant. Italian importers sell this at five times as much. In Tunisia, it costs only 10 cents a kilo according to La Repubblica. In Italy, it costs € 4-5 (€ 7 in the Centre-North, € 3.53 in Apulia, € 3.64 in Calabria). African oil costs 20 to 23 cents to import.’
Of course, this is not the first exposé of a scandal in Italian olive oils. If you check out the website: http://web.mac.com
you will realize that there are regular reports of fraud- the site records those in the last 30 years, starting from 1981 when 402 people died of food poisoning in Spain due to adulterated olive oil. In 2007 Daily Telegraph had reported that only 4% of the olive oil leaving Italy was pure Italian olive oil. In 2009, USA today reported a Connecticut research that indicated that 90% of the extra virgin olive oil was in fact Soybean oil.
Book on Scandals
Interestingly, well timed with the latest revelation of the scandal, a new book titled ‘Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil has been released in the USA. This would be a revelation to an average consumer, or even an enthusiastic amateur cook, who has probably never even tasted a real, superior extra-virgin Italian olive oil- full-bodied, aromatic and often quite peppery, feels the author Tom Mueller who is a Harvard graduate, writes for New Yorker and lives in Italy.
Tom has researched widely to illuminate olive oil’s place in religion, literature, cuisine and cultures both ancient and modern. He writes about scandals, romance, history, personalities and pop references. Apparently, Don Vito Corleone of Mario Puzo’s Godfather was modeled after a real Italian-American olive oil importer and mobster. As Mueller makes clear, the chances are extremely high that if you buy an ordinary bottle of extra-virgin olive oil in (an American) supermarket, you are most likely getting what a connoisseur would contemptuously call lampante: low-grade lamp oil, worthy only of burning.
Such inferior olive oils are not virgin, much less extra-virgin. They are adulterated with sunflower, soybean and other oils, deodorized and tarted up to a bland in being offensive. They’re probably not even made from olives grown in Italy. Cheap supermarket oils most often are made from olives grown in Spain before being shipped in tanker-size bulk consignments to Italy for blending and bottling.
Oil companies get away with this because regulation of olive oil is loose in Europe and virtually nonexistent in the United States (much less in India where hotels and consumers increasing consumer it extensively) . Other gourmet food products, such as butter or wine, are highly controlled both within their industries and by governments, according to a Review of the book.
Thirty years ago in Spain, Mueller says, more than 20,000 people were poisoned and some 800 died from consuming “fake olive oil made from rapeseed oil denatured with aniline, a highly toxic organic compound used to manufacture plastics.
A bottle of super-premium oils is extremely difficult to find even in the USA but for a few high-end restaurants and the Culinary Institute of America, cites the author. A bottle super-premium EVOO from Spain, would cost you $32 plus shipping at Amazon.com. Even a California premium olive oil will cost over $18. The top quality is described by Mueller as ‘sublime, every one so spicy and distinctive it made my teeth hurt.’
So next time, you ask for the bottle of extra virgin olive oil at a restaurant, try to figure out if it is a 10 euro cent cheap olive oil from Tunisia or a super-premium $32 a liter oil.
Subhash Arora |