“Between September 2016 and December 2019, the JRC recorded 32 cases of fraud in the global olive oil industry. Twenty of the 32 cases occurred in Europe. The most common infringement practices were marketing virgin olive oil as extra virgin and selling blended olive and vegetable oils as pure olive oil. In countries outside of the E.U., olive oil fraud usually included dilution and substitution of oils. For example, in Brazil, the mixing of olive oil with lampante or soybean oil was the most common fraudulent practice. Further examples of fraud identified by the report included a 2017 incident in which only six of the 35 sampled extra virgin olive oils sold in Danish supermarkets were extra virgin. In Greece, on the other hand, the police arrested seven people and charged them with adding green dye to sunflower oil and marketing it as olive oil. In Spain, the world’s largest olive oil cooperative was fined in 2018 for failing to pay the tariffs on imported olive oil from Tunisia, which was then blended with lower quality olive oil and exported to the United States as virgin olive oil.”
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