
Agromafia - kungfudoi
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-agromafia-food-fraud/
======
Jerry2
> _We were curious about what we 'd find in a U.S. supermarket. So we shipped
> three brands of Italian extra virgin we purchased in New York back to the
> mother country._

> _They were included in a blind taste test by those experts in Rome. The
> process is as tightly orchestrated as a Verdi opera. Blue glass hides the
> oil 's color. Separate cubicles prevent cheating._

> _The panel would not say they were adulterated - but they agreed two brands
> we purchased back home did not come within a sniff of extra virgin. They
> described one as lampante -- the lowest quality olive oil. That brand
> happens to be one of the best-selling in America._

Fascinating. I guess it's becoming really hard to find a bottle of genuine
extra virgin olive oil. Odds are that the extra virgin olive oil from a
supermarket is just some other oil with some chlorophyll added for coloring.

~~~
elorant
_I guess it 's becoming really hard to find a bottle of genuine extra virgin
olive oil._

Buy Greek extra virgin. Guaranteed flavor and quality. Italians buy it to
raise the quality of theirs. In Greece 80% of virgin oil production is extra
virgin. In Italy it's less than 50%, while in Spain less than 20%.

Here's one for example: [http://www.amazon.com/Iliada-Extra-Virgin-Olive-
Liter/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Iliada-Extra-Virgin-Olive-
Liter/dp/B003TO9SJS/)

~~~
pvaldes
> In Greece 80% of virgin oil production is extra virgin. In Italy it's less
> than 50%, while in Spain less than 20%.

Just a note: After wikipedia in 2013, world production of virgin olive oil was
2.8 million tonnes. Spain produced 1.1 million tonnes, or 39% of world
production in this year whereas in Greece the production of virgin olive oil
was only 0.31 million tonnes. Therefore, please note that with your data both
countries will produce almost the same amount of liters of extra virgin in
fact.

If you find that in Spain less than 20% of the virgin olive oil is extra, this
is a good thing, not bad. Means that if you read "extra virgin" in the tag is
top quality. Only the best of the best can be tagged as extra virgin (More
than 80% of the candidates are eliminated in the process). Of course, the
controlled and 'low' production is also a marketing strategy to keeping prices
of this premium product always high. Spain could produce much more bottles of
extra virgin if they wanted to do so.

After wikipedia: Extra-virgin olive oil accounts normally for less than 10% of
oil produced (extra-virgin + virgin + refined + pomace) so to find extra-
virgin produced in California should be currently difficult, but the
percentage is 80% in Greece, 65% in Italy and 50% in Spain and is not
difficult to find in the european markets. Is just that is not cheap.

------
Blahah
My grandfather was a chemist at GSK, and at one stage in his career was
responsible for sourcing raw ingredients for many of their products
(toothpaste, soft drinks, etc).

One such ingredient was lemons. He used to travel regularly to Sicily where he
would sit down with the local Mafia families and try to negotiate huge lemon
juice contracts. They would trot out some juice and he would taste it and
perform various chemical tests. His first time doing this he decided they had
excellent juice and ordered all the juice they could produce that season, but
when the full shipment arrived and he tested it in London he found it was fake
lemon juice - water with citric acid and some other crap.

So he goes back to Sicily to sit down with these families again. This time he
tells them: I have authority to spend more money on lemons than anyone else in
the world. I'm also a better chemist than anyone you could possibly employ.
I'm buying the same amount again, but this time I'm testing every tank before
it boards the ship. We get the best you've got this time, and every time in
future. If anything is off, we're never buying lemons in Sicily again.

He said he half expected to disappear that night, but instead the next day he
got VIP treatment at the dock while he and his team tested every single tank
of juice, and it was all perfect. For the rest of his career GSK got top
quality lemon juice. After he died my grandmother received several letters
from his contacts in Sicily, thanking him for being fair and honest.

The sad thing is that it's the locals who really get fucked over in these
scenarios: they fear the Mafia and their livelihoods are totally under their
control.

~~~
kafkaesq
So GSK knowingly did business with the Sicilian Mafia? Fascinating.

------
ryan606
This was a very interesting 60 Minutes piece last night, but also very
frustrating. They tested three brands of EVOO sold in the US, and found two
were complete fakes, but didn't tell viewers which ones not to buy. How does
this provide any actionable information to the public? At least tell us what
we should be looking out for.

~~~
lukeschlather
They would get sued for libel, and they would lose because these taste tests
are not valid evidence in US court.

I suspect the problem is somewhat overstated - to me it sounded like the
tasters believed the olive oils were lower-grade, but without a rigorous
definition of what that is it's hard to say how big the problem is.

Personally, I buy the lower-grade EVOO for sautéing. I'm going to be
disappointed if it's really just olive oil with chlorophyll added, but at the
same time I'm not looking for high-grade stuff when I buy a $10 bottle of oil.
It would be a waste for what I'm doing with it.

~~~
mikeash
In the US, isn't it up to the accuser to prove libel, not the defendant to
prove that what they said was true?

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pvaldes
The guy parroting in the article is really annoying.

In the other side, this is again a problem of uneducated consumers. People
don't know currently what mean concepts like bread or milk. Seriously the real
taste of milk is totally different to the watermilk/waterchalk that we drink
currently. You buy cheap and by unknown brands, you'll have a cheap product.

I can't talk by Italy, but in Spain this is a serious market. If some brand
would be tempted to sell fake olive oil mixed with other oils as pure virgin
olive oil _directly to the final consumer_ [1] the competence, consumer's
associations and the government would eat it raw in five minutes. Olive oil
sold to consumers can not contain sunflower and of course _not_ the infamous
canola oil. The idea to mixing rapeseed and olive oils and selling it as pure
olive oil will be _outrageous_ in Spain.

We need to remember that in 1981 more than 20.000 spaniards where poisoned by
scammers selling fake canola oil. Many died and other suffered permanent
nervous damage for the rest of their lives. It was a really bitter lesson and
the market is strongly regulated since then.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spain_rapeseed_oil_toxici...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spain_rapeseed_oil_toxicity)

[1] Everybody can expect to have sunflower oil, palm and also canola in their
favourite brand of potato chips or cookies, but is advertised as vegetable
oils. You can mix olive oil with other edible oils as long as you tell the
consumer what is eating and we do not joke about it; Pepsico was fined in 2003
for fake advertising with a brand of 100% olive oil fried potato chips. Other
company quickly unclosed that the real content of olive oil was the 2%,
brought the brand to trial and won.

~~~
LoSboccacc
As Italian can confirm. Some of the tastes of my youth disappeared
(strawberries are nothing like old locals one you could get) but people take
food labelling very, very seriously.

------
JoeAltmaier
I used to get good olive oil when I lived in California. A little old guy
would call me on the phone once a year, and ask if I needed more Olive Oil. I
would always say Yes! and order a bottle or two. Then his granddaughter would
get on the line and verify my address etc.

This guy owned the trees, pressed the olives and bottled it himself. It was
the best stuff I ever tasted. He quit calling years ago; I miss him.

~~~
SolveEverything
Anyone know of the best way to buy the best EVO (extra virgin olive oil)?
reply

------
jkereako
Buy olive oil from California Olive Ranch. It's not great (I'm on the east
coast, and the latest harvest I can find is from October, 2014), but it's most
likely the real thing.

~~~
meowface
I do use their olive oil. I prefer it to anything else I've tried from a
grocery store.

>It's not great

Well, what is a great brand, then?

~~~
jkereako
I say "not great" because in grocery stores in my area, all of the California
Olive Ranch bottles are over a year old. The longer the oil sits, the worse it
becomes. Also, the bottles are sitting beneath fluorescent lights. It does
help that the bottles are dark green, but completely opaque is better.

California Olive Ranch is a fine brand because, as far as I know, they can be
trusted. That's the only reason why a brand even matters. They're members of
the California Olive Council.

EDIT

If you're on west coast, I'd be curious to know the harvest date listed on
your bottle.

------
jcrei
For the most part, you should avoid Italian brands of olive oil (sold outside
of Italy). They mix Greek, Spanish, Portuguese olive oil, then label it
Italian for branding purposes, and the content is never virgin or extra
virgin. The labelling is misleading on purpose. If you can find, go with
either Greek or Portuguese. Much less adulterated olive oil.

------
galfarragem
The relationship between quality and price of goods is, in most of cases, an
hyperbolic function. Unless we are experts we can't really feel the quality
difference between a $25 vs a $50 gallon of olive oil. The same for wine.
Maybe most people can spot the difference between a €2 vs a €10 bottle (wine
in my country is cheap..), but not between a €10 vs a €20 bottle.

~~~
legulere
Human sensing is very relative. Just two days ago I was in a museum about
tricks of the senses [1]. At one station there were three sandpapers. One
fine, one medium and one coarse. You had to first rub your hands on the outer
ones simultaneously and then both on the one in the middle (the medium one) at
the same time. Although it was one uniform sandpaper it felt different
depending on the hand. I think with taste and smell it's very similar that
smaller differences only really matter in direct comparison.

Even experts after training will have a hard time, there are some studies out
there where sommeliers didn't notice they got white wine with red food
colouring.

[1]: [http://turmdersinne.de/en/home](http://turmdersinne.de/en/home)

------
jc4321
Olea Estates EVOO from Sparta, Greece is the real deal! USDA organic
certified, hand picked olives, first-pressed and cold-pressed. Extremely low
acidity and all of our testing is available online. It is my husband's family
farm started in 1856. Check out our early harvest Olea Gold unfiltered,
strong, peppery, finishing EVOO. The highest polyphenols are in this oil. Our
kalamata and tsakistes olives are also delicious! www.oleaestates.com

------
varjag
> We can call ourselves the FBI of food.

~~~
std_throwaway
Then why are they investigating foreign products?

~~~
kifki
They aren't. This is the Italian police investigating Italian products.

------
samstave
There was an interesting story on NPR a while back about counterfeit honey
from china.

[http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-
laundering/](http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/08/honey-laundering/)

------
patrick_99
I did an olive oil tasting at a local shop dedicated to olive oil. Unlike the
grocery store olive oil I've always had, their olive oil had a bit of a
burning sensation in my throat. Lots of flavour; I buy my olive oil from them
now.

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p_eter_p
Olive oil is being produced in Georgia now:

[http://georgiaolivefarms.com/](http://georgiaolivefarms.com/)

I've gone through a couple bottles and was not disappointed.

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galfarragem
As rules of thumb (my grandparents used to have olive trees), I would use:
pure olive oil is thicker and gets solid with the cold. The same for honey.

------
SolveEverything
Know of the best way to buy the best EVO (extra virgin olive oil)?

------
golergka
Still, it's better than robbing, beating and killing people.

~~~
reviseddamage
No, it's not "still better than robbing, beating and killing people", because
those are the things you would need to do in order to integrate and control
every stage of the agri-food value chain.

