Slippery Business.... fake olive oil as profitable as cocaine with no risk.
The extra-virgin olive oil you find at your local supermarket very likely is not extra-virgin at all. It turns out that the USDA doesn't even recognize classifications such as "extra-virgin." As a result, bottlers all over the world can blend olive oil with cheaper vegetable oils and sell it for a premium price as "extra-virgin." If you care to learn more about the widespread fraud in the olive oil industry read this: Slippery Business, The New Yorker, August 13, 2007.
On August 10, 1991, a rusty tanker called the Mazal II docked at the industrial port of Ordu, in Turkey, and pumped twenty-two hundred tons of hazelnut oil into its hold. The ship then embarked on a meandering voyage through the Mediterranean and the North Sea. By September 21st, when the Mazal II reached Barletta, a port in Puglia, in southern Italy, its cargo had become, on the ship's official documents, Greek olive oil.
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Paolo De Castro, who was appointed Italy's agriculture minister in 2006, told me that olive-oil fraud has been a problem in the past but that he was taking action to curb it. ''In the past few years, we have tightened things up a lot, through our Inspectorate for Quality Control, and through our carabinieri corps,? he said. One problem is that Italian officials charged with detecting adulterated oil can, in theory, be held liable for their actions. ''Who's going to take this responsibility?'' asked Lanfranco Conte, a professor of food chemistry at the University of Udine, who in the early nineties was the head of a laboratory belonging to the Agriculture Ministry's anti-fraud unit. ''If you decide to block three thousand tons of oil and it turns out you were wrong, you pay out of your own pocket.'' Colonel De Filippi acknowledged that some companies are essentially immune to investigation. "Unfortunately, there are big producers who have strong political ties," he said.
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In February, 2006, federal marshals seized about sixty-one thousand litres of what was supposedly extra-virgin olive oil and twenty-six thousand litres of a lower-grade olive oil from a New Jersey warehouse. Some of the oil, which consisted almost entirely of soybean oil, was destined for a company called Krinos Foods, a member of the North American Olive Oil Association.
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bastids :coffee:
Re: Slippery Business.... fake olive oil as profitable as cocaine with no risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
jagbender 
Bunk gear, now this! WTF?
And a Roland Kickinger impostor.
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Slippery Business.... fake olive oil as profitable as cocaine with no risk.
Here I have been getting Kirkland organic thinking it was probably one of the top labels like Bertolli just re-branded and turns out its better! Glad I made that assumption!!!
Re: Slippery Business.... fake olive oil as profitable as cocaine with no risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Little Wing real evoo will keep a lamp wick burning, solidifies in the fridge, and melts again when room temp. not foolproof but a quick test that will uncover most fakes.
Nice to know.
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