03 Jun

Spanish & Italian Olive Oil fraud’s adulteration

By Andrew Weil,
Q: I understand that a magazine reported that a lot of the olive oil from Italy is adulterated with lesser oils and described ongoing fraud in the olive oil business. Do you have any information about this?
A: I have read the article you mention, it reports that fraud remains a major problem [...]

29 May

Canada: Olive oil imports were half sunflower

A Toronto-area food importer and distributor has been fined for importing an olive/sunflower oil blend labelled as “extra virgin olive oil” in 2006.
Jan K. Overweel Ltd., which markets the Emma, Casa Italia and Cortina Foods brands and other imported products, was convicted in Toronto in February under the federal Food and Drugs Act, with the [...]

10 May

SOS Cuetara to issue 200 mln euros of shares to plug hole

Spain’s SOS Cuetara (SOS.MC) said on Sunday it would issue 200 million euros of new shares to plug a hole in its accounts after top executives were discovered siphoning off funds to buy shares in the olive oil bottler.
SOS said it was restating 2008 results and booking a loss after it emerged that chairman and [...]

02 May

SOS Cuetara’s top execs fired, shares suspended

by Tracy Rucinski & Rodrigo de Miguel,

Spain’s SOS Cuetara (SOS.MC), the world’s biggest olive oil bottler, said on Thursday it had fired its two top executives after discovering last month they had used company funds to buy SOS shares.
“SOS Group’s board, which met today, has fired Jesus and Jaime Salazar Bello as chairman and deputy [...]

18 Mar

NZ: CRI denies involvement in olive oil judging scandal

By Allan Swann,
Plant & Food Research is distancing itself from a recent Olives NZ judging scandal, claiming its involvement had nothing to do the outcome that saw head judge Margaret Edwards award her own oil first place.
Plant and Food Research, formerly HortResearch, provided venues, equipment and logistics for the event, but spokesman Roger Bourne tells [...]

22 Dec

Spain: Adulterated olive oil warning in La Roija

The Guardia Civil in La Rioja has warned about the possible sale of adulterated olive oil in the area.
550 litres of oil has been found in large container labelled ‘Astispumante 1510’ and it comes after the theft of 1,750 litres of oil was reported in the area on December 18.
The oil was found in [...]

05 Dec

The difficulty in finding the finest olive oil

By Alex Renton,
Oil pressed from the first green olives is a taste like no other. But fraud means that finding a good one is hard.
The green of the olive oil is shocking: like Night Nurse. Or Swarfega. You wouldn’t put it in your mouth if it wasn’t so reassuringly expensive. With reverence, we poured it [...]

21 Nov

Connecticut Now Requires Listing Any Additives in Olive Oil

By Anne M. Hamilton,
The stock market may be tanking, jobs are disappearing and the state budget is hundreds of millions in the red, but at least our olive oil will be safe.
Prompted by a complaint from a Norwalk importer, the state Department of Consumer Protection has enacted regulations guarding the purity of olive oil, making [...]

19 Nov

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission eyes olive oil claims

By Leslie White,

AUSTRALIA’S competition watchdog will investigate the apparent failure of some imported olive oils to live up to their premium “extra virgin” label.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry follows tests by a NSW Government laboratory that found many imported oils labelled as extra virgin were actually a lower grade oil, were heat treated [...]

27 Oct

Olive Oil Cops - Italian police can taste fake olive oil

Twenty members of the Italian NAS food piracy unit have graduated from a special course laid on by the Italian National Olive Oil Association Unaprol.
Police said the group graduated from a course taught by the National Olive Oil Association Unaprol that included instruction on how to taste fake extra-virgin olive oil and how to determine [...]

08 Oct

Australia Swimming in Low-Grade Olive Oil

Australia is becoming a dumping ground for low-grade olive oil, with no controls on cheap imitations coming in from Europe, experts.
Consumer demand for extra virgin olive oil, known to be a “healthy fat”, is soaring in Australia, which has attracted hungry European manufacturers.
But some extra virgin olive oil sold here - the majority of which [...]

21 May

Mineral oil in land of the olive

By Nikos Xydakis,
Although many jokes have been made about the sunflower oil contamination scandal, it is no laughing matter.
It is not even an isolated incident, because along with the contaminated oil from Ukraine, we are also seeing large quantities of sunflower oil from Belgium – the heart of the European Union – being withdrawn from [...]

08 Mar

what does ‘extra-virgin’ really mean?

Bee Wilson looks into the murky world of olive oil.
‘Extra-virgin’ suggests great purity. It sounds even better in Italy, land of superlatives and Madonnas: extravergine. It rolls off the tongue like a prayer. So it’s a shame that much Italian extra-virgin olive oil - perfect oil from the first pressing of olives - is anything [...]

05 Mar

Italian police crack down on olive oil fraud

By Malcolm Moore,
Police in Italy have arrested 23 people and confiscated 85 farms in an operation that has exposed the scale of the country’s fraudulent olive oil trade.
More than 400 officers took part in Operation Golden Oil after an investigation discovered as many as 91 people may have been involved in passing off low quality [...]