Thomas Fry รีทวีตแล้ว
Italian olive oil is one of the most adulterated products in the global food supply. Estimates suggest 70 to 80% of "extra virgin olive oil" sold worldwide is either mislabelled lower-grade oil or cut with cheaper seed oils.
The fraud is run by organised crime. The 'Ndrangheta operates olive oil adulteration rings that generate more profit than cocaine trafficking. They import cheap oil from Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey, relabel it as Italian, and export it at premium prices to people who think they're buying authenticity.
Or they cut extra virgin with refined olive oil, lampante (lamp oil grade, unfit for human consumption), or seed oils like sunflower and soybean, then sell the mixture as pure extra virgin to supermarkets and restaurants.
The Italian government knows. The EU knows. Occasional busts happen, the headlines run for a week, the fraud continues. The margins are enormous. The penalties are a rounding error.
Even the legitimate stuff has problems. Intensive olive cultivation in Spain has eroded hillsides, drained aquifers, and contaminated groundwater with pesticide runoff. Traditional groves are being torn out and replaced with high-density intensive plantations that demand irrigation in arid climates, heavy spraying, and mechanical harvesting that wrecks the soil.
The waste water is highly polluting. Every litre of olive oil produces 1 to 1.5 litres of effluent loaded with organic compounds, phenols, and residual oil. It gets dumped in evaporation ponds or discharged with token treatment.
Your £12 bottle of "Italian extra virgin" is probably mislabelled Tunisian oil cut with sunflower, possibly sold by organised crime, definitely draining a Mediterranean aquifer, and generating toxic waste at the press.
But it's from plants. So it's definitely healthier than butter from a British dairy cow grazing on rain-fed grass three miles down the road.
English
