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Old June 29th, 2010 #1
Igor Alexander
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Join Date: May 2007
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Default Is the olive oil you're buying the real deal?

As cynical as I am, I have to admit that I was shocked to learn of this practice.

http://www.bohemian.com/bohemian/07....raud-0830.html

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In the olive oil market, not everything is as green as it seems. Much of the "extra virgin" oil with which Americans cook is nothing better than cheap nut oil blended with low-grade olive oil, coloring and artificial flavors. Most of this fraudulent product comes from overseas, most notably, from Italy.
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[O]live oils of more that 3.3 percent free fatty acid cannot legally be sold for human consumption in Europe, though some hustlers are known to flavor this so-called lamp oil, or lampante, with beta-carotene, color it with chlorophyll, falsely label it and market it as extra virgin. An oil's peroxide level, a measure of oxidation, and its ultraviolet value, which indicates light damage, must also meet standard minimums to qualify as extra virgin.

Even Italians guzzle the fake stuff, according to Maurizio Bogoni, head agronomist at Ruffino Winery in Tuscany. Ruffino and other Italian estate growers cannot sufficiently supply the nation's oil consumption, and thus Italy relies on imports from Turkey, Morocco, Spain and elsewhere. The shipments frequently arrive as old, soggy, unprocessed olives, which in turn produce oils ranging from flavorless to rancid, though adulteration adequately hides these defects from the average consumer, who is easily convinced by TV and magazine ads that many big-business oil swindlers are honest producers, says Bogoni.
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In the U.S., imported oil labeled as extra virgin may run five to 10 bucks per liter, but experts contend that olive oil is too difficult and costly to produce to allow for such low prices; such "deals" are merely shams, they say. Most true extra virgin olive oils from Italy run $20 to $40 for a half- to one-liter bottle. California Olive Ranch sells its half-liters for $11.99. Stockton's Bozzano Olive Ranch sells the same size for $16 to $22.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...urrentPage=all

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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. Krinos blamed the fraud on its supplier, DMK Global Marketing, which in turn blamed the Italian bottlers from whom it had bought the oil.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...oil-fraud.html

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In March, in an operation called Golden Oil, police arrested 23 people and confiscated 85 farms after a investigation into suspect producers.

A month later another racket was busted, with police closing down seven olive oil plants and arresting 40 people in an investigation spanning nine provinces. Officers seized more than 25,000 litres of suspect oil. Those arrested were accused of adding sunflower and soybean oil to the genuine product and selling it as extra-virgin oil in Italy and abroad.

Police said they intercepted large shipments of the fraudulent oil just as they were about to be exported to Germany, Switzerland and the US.

Flavouring and other chemicals had been added to the blended vegetable oil to give it the distinctive golden lustre of high-quality olive oil.
http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400316/Olive-Oil-Fraud

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In 1997 and 1998, olive oil was considered the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, so much so that the EU's anti-fraud office established an olive oil task force. One investigator told Mueller that profits from this criminal enterprise were "comparable to cocaine trafficking with none of the risks."
http://www.saltonstallestate.com/html/fraud_.html

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There are many inconsistencies in the olive oil marketplace, and an extremely low price should make you question the quality, and even the purity, of the oil. Depending on the region in Italy, labor and bottling expenses can cost as much as $8 to $10 per liter. At the store, premium extra virgin olive oils sell for $10 to $50 per liter, but a reasonable outlay is around $20.
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Extra virgin olive oil is perishable, so by the time you buy oil without a birth date, it may well be past its life expectancy. Oil that is significantly older than 2 years past its bottling date will begin to turn rancid and lose its heart-healthy properties.
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Exposure to light and consistent high heat can also turn great oil into a vile, thick mess, so look for oils in dark glass bottles or in boxes, and store them in a cool, dark place.
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Truth-in-labeling laws in the olive oil industry are loose at best. For instance, the phrase “cold-pressed” is obsolete, but manufacturers continue to use the term. “Anyone can put anything he or she wants on a label—cold-pressed, handpicked, picked at midnight—and there’s no system to verify the accuracy of these statements,” Nicola Ruggiero, president of Unaprol, an Italian olive oil association, told The Report, a 60-Minutes–type program produced by the Italian television station, RAI.
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The Middle Eastern press recently cited LIO—Turkey’s largest producer of olive oil and the world’s largest producer of hazelnut oil—and one of its subsidiaries for selling blended hazelnut and olive oil as pure olive oil to Argentina and Brazil.
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Ultimately, it’s up to consumers to vote with their wallets and to show unethical producers that they won’t pay for falsely advertised products. That’s the case for professional olive oil buyers, as well. One distributor that the NAOOA caught for selling adulterated oil to a restaurant said in his defense, “I’m a crook, but not in a wrongful way. My customers knew from the lower price that I wasn’t selling them 100 percent olive oil.”
http://www.masdesbories.com/html/fraud_alert.html

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In supermarkets "Extra Virgin olive oils" are offered at dumping prices. We tested eight olive oils using the latest methods in two laboratories.

Results: Four oils from discount stores are mislabeled- they did not hold up to the examinations and have apparently been treated.
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fraud, italy, olive oil

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