Food fraud in the struggling olive oil sector has continued to rise, with 18,000 litres of fake olive oil seized in Portugal last week.
The Portuguese Food & Economic Security Authority seized over €57,000 (£48,000) worth of cooking oil, along with 177,690 labels mentioning olive oil, during a raid at a refining site in Torres Novas, central Portugal, last week.
Authorities suspected the cooking oil would go on to be marketed as olive oil.
It follows a major operation by the Italian carabinieri in Puglia two weeks ago, where police seized a total 42 tonnes of faux extra virgin olive oil worth €900,000 – equivalent to over £757,000.
The alleged criminals were using chlorophyll to adulterate the oils, authorities believed.
Some of the 42 tonnes of oil was already packaged for sale and the rest was ready for distribution. Customs excise duty stamps that are being studied for forgery, and labels claiming the oil was “extra virgin”, were also seized.
Italy’s national gendarmerie has now accused seven individuals of criminal conspiracy, adulteration of food substances intended for marketing, fraud in public military supplies and adulteration of food for export.
Olive oil crime has been on the rise as record prices for the cooking staple over the past couple of years have made it even more lucrative for fraudsters to sell fake extra virgin olive oil.
According to The Grocer’s Key Value Items tracker, olive oil prices have increased by 37% year on year on average across the major multiples.
Europol warned last year that “a mix of various factors, such as the general inflation of prices, reduced olive oil production and increasing demand, have created the perfect breeding ground for fraudulent producers”.
Read more: Olive oil production estimates decrease again
Filippo Berio UK CEO Walter Zanre alerted British buyers of the dangers of purchasing olive oil from unreliable sources, but said “UK importers take their responsibility seriously”.
“In 25 years of testing olive oils purchased from UK supermarket shelves, we have never found an adulterated oil.”
However, he said the quality of the olive oil being sold across British supermarkets had started to decrease recently.
Routine sampling results seen by The Grocer also showed a deterioration in quality of olive oils across the board.
“What we do see is a lot of oil with flavour defects, which declasses it and so it should not be labelled/sold as extra virgin olive oil,” Zanre added.
“At Filippo Berio we invest a lot of resources in testing all the oils we use to ensure they are not adulterated and comply with all legal requirements, both chemical and organoleptic.
“However, at times we feel we are not on a level playing field as some bottlers are knowingly using oils that fail to meet the EVOO criteria.”
The Filippo Berio boss has previously claimed it was ”almost impossible to buy good quality extra virgin olive oils” nowadays.
Read more: Shoppers turn away from olive oil as prices rise, warns Filippo Berio
This was in part due to the pressure olive oil markets face after three consecutive years of extreme drought massively affected harvests across the Mediterranean, including in Spain – the world’s largest producer – Italy, Portugal, Greece and Turkey.
It has also forced buyers of the so-called “liquid gold” to look elsewhere. Spain’s imports of Argentinian olive oil more than doubled in 2023, increasing to €37.6m (£31.6m) from €11.5m (£9.7m) the year before, due to a poor harvest and rising prices, according to the Olive Oil Times.
There have also been reports that Saudi Arabia is pledging to invest €52m (£43.7m) in Tunisian olive oil production to mitigate the decrease seen in southern Europe, with several projects across the country’s deserts already in place.
This would propel the northern African nation’s output from the current average of 200,000 tonnes a year to one million tonnes a year – potentially surpassing Spain’s annual output.
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