Some 23 people were arrested in raids across Italy yesterday (6 March), and 85 farms and 23 oil processing plants seized, in an operation that exposed the scale of trade in fraudulent olive oil, local reports said.
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The raids followed an investigation into the thriving illegal business in which reportedly lower-quality olives are being imported from Tunisia, Greece and Spain, and then crushed in Italy with the resulting product sold off as olive oil made in Italy.
Sales of this fake Italian olive oil were worth an estimated EUR39m (US$70.5m).
The criminals involved had also falsely obtained EUR6.5m in EU subsidies for growing olives.
Other frauds include labelling inferior oil as extra-virgin, and claiming EU subsidies for growing olives in Italy that are imported.
“In the last year alone, there has been an increase of 25% in fake olive oil,” a spokesman for Coldiretti, the Italian farmers’ union, was quoted as saying.
If February, the European Commission wrote to the Italian government to complain about rules obliging olive oil producers to state the source of their olives on bottles.
A spokesman said the Commission had not yet opened formal legal proceedings against Italy over the labelling rules, but added that such a system was clearly “illegal”.
Coldiretti has argued that the labelling helps in the fight against fraud.
