Fake Olive Oil

A public announcement. From Anonymous:

There’s an enemy at the gates, it has been slowly infiltrating our olive oil market and corrupting one of the products that we all know is a healthy, sustainable option and one of Europe’s secrets to longevity. That’s right, 7 of the biggest olive oil manufacturers in the US have been cutting their products with cheaper, inferior oils (such as sunflower oil or canola oil) in order to minimize the cost of production, but it has come at a huge cost to everyone who invests in this healthy alternative.

And this is not too dissimilar to 2008, when over 400 Italian police officers participated in a major crackdown called “Operation Golden Oil.” This resulted in the seizure of 85 oil farms who were adding certain percentages of chlorophyll to sunflower and canola oil and selling it on as extra virgin olive oil. The oil is mixed, perfumed, coloured and then flavoured before being sold to the producer as “extra virgin.” These busts prompted the Australian government to investigate their own olive oil market, and indeed, after testing all of its brands’ “extra virgin olive oils” in their laboratories, none were given the 2012 certification for being a pure olive oil. All of these scams prompted the University of California to carry out studies on 124 imported brands of extra virgin olive oil, and they found that over 70% of the samples failed the test. (Read more.)