E.V. Oh No! Fraud in the Olive Oil Business
If you've watched enough '80s cop dramas, you're probably familiar with the concept of shady international cartels "cutting" illicit drugs to make a shipment go farther on the street. But who would have thought the same thing would go down with olive oil?
This week's New Yorker magazine has a lengthy feature on fraud in the olive oil business, detailing recent scandals of hazelnut oiladulterated extra-virgins while delving into what turns out to be a long history of such shenanigans.
Most olive-oil frauds are easy to detect using chemical tests. In February, 2005, the N.A.S. Carabinieri broke up a criminal ring operating in several regions of Italy, and confiscated a hundred thousand litres of fake olive oil, with a street value of six million euros (about eight million dollars). The ring, which allegedly sold its products in northern Italy and in Germany, is accused of coloring low-grade soy oil and canola oil with industrial chlorophyll, flavoring it with beta-carotene, and packaging it as extra-virgin olive oil in tins and bottles emblazoned with pictures of Italian flags or Mt. Vesuvius, and with folksy names of imaginary producers—the Farmhouse, the Ancient Millstones.
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4 Comments:
Disturbing and funny all at once. EVOO Cartels? Extra Virgin Criminal Rings? Maybe I should just buy a farm and make all of my own food. I swear, you can't trust anything anymore can you?
foodette at 6:49PM on 08/13/07
Oh My God!!! What's a consumer to do these days??
joturtle at 12:24AM on 08/14/07
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Say it an't so?! PUHLEASE say it ain't so?! OMG I'm gonna cry buckets of fake, extra virgin olive oil...oh the humanity!
Seriously, I just bought this and it is sooo yummy and doesn't 'seize' up in the fridge...please tell me this is the real deal:
http://www.amazon.com/Extra-Virgin-Olive-Oil-Gallon/dp/B000MMO8W2/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-3774300-4809557?ie=UTF8&s=gourmet-food&qid=1187137124&sr=8-1
Tell me the truth...I can take it, I think...*sniff-sob*
cheffy at 8:21PM on 08/14/07
I'm sorry, but that Genco olive oil is exactly what I imagined as I was reading the New Yorker article. It has got to be "adulterated." It's too inexpensive not to be.
I've just always assumed that the Extra Virgin olive oil from big suppliers like Bertoli is not really Extra Virgin olive oil, or at least 100% Extra Virgin. How else could you account for the relative low cost and slight chemical taste of most supermarket olive oils? And how else could you explain the wide discrepancy in taste between decent olive oils like Frantoia (about $20/L from Fairway) and the average supermarket olive oil?
I kind of like Marseglia's take on the whole thing. The goal is to provide good tasting olive oil for everyday use. The unfortunate thing is that a superior tasting non-Extra Virgin olive oil has no chance against a lesser oil fraudulently marketed as 100% Extra Virgin. So everybody has to lie to survive.
chungle at 1:39PM on 08/15/07