Premium olive oil has always been a prime suspect for industrial-scale adulteration, theft or substitution risks. This year commodity prices have been particularly volatile and olive oil fraud has moved higher up the risk registers. Evidence that business-to-business fraud is occurring has continued to emerge over the past few weeks with police seizures of bulk quantities of adulterated oil in three different jurisdictions, multiple arrests, and freezing of bank accounts. In two cases the oil was intended for distribution on the global market.
In Spain …… fraudsters mixed cloudy oils – a sub-product of the olive oil producing process – with better quality olive oil so as to obtain the correct levels of fats and other markers to meet the EVOO. They also impeded traceability by not registering their companies’ oils.
In Italy …….. in a linked case, the carabinieri discovered a similar alleged falsification operation involving two large oil-processing companies.
In Brazil …….. there have been two unrelated bulk seizures, one in Panana where soybean oil had been tailored to pass off as EVOO and a national case where supply to major retailers was found to be low quality oil unfit for human consumption. The former case was revealed by NMR analysis.
https://www.oliveoiltimes.com/business/authorities-in-brazil-seize-9000-bottles-of-fraudulent-olive-oil/126761
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/04/police-in-spain-and-italy-seize-5000-litres-of-adulterated-olive-oil-in-raids
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