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E.V. Oh No! Fraud in the Olive Oil Business

Posted by Adam Kuban, August 13, 2007 at 5:45 PM

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 oil–adulterated 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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Tags: olive oil