France Uncovers Olive Oil Fraud in Annual Investigation

Summary

Regulatory scrutiny in France has uncov­ered numer­ous cases of mis­la­bel­ing and olive oil fraud, with one-third of edi­ble oil sam­ples show­ing issues, lead­ing to crim­i­nal reports, admin­is­tra­tive injunc­tions, and sales order with­drawals. Despite these find­ings, advo­cates of the olive oil sec­tor argue that fraud remains a rel­a­tively minor issue, with the high anom­aly rate attrib­uted to tar­geted inves­ti­ga­tions rather than wide­spread fraud.

Regulatory scrutiny in France con­tin­ues to uncover dozens of cases of mis­la­bel­ing and olive oil fraud in a coun­try where annual con­sump­tion reaches about 115,000 met­ric tons.

In a yearly anti-fraud inves­ti­ga­tion, pub­lished in July, the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) iden­ti­fied issues with one-third of edi­ble oil sam­ples, includ­ing olive oil.

Inspectors from the direc­torate, which is part of the French Ministry of Economics and Finance, took 139 oil sam­ples, includ­ing 96 olive oils, asso­ci­ated with 223 millers, dis­trib­u­tors and retail­ers. Based on its find­ings, the orga­ni­za­tion issued two crim­i­nal reports, 18 admin­is­tra­tive injunc­tions, 52 warn­ings and two sales order with­drawals.

There’s no rea­son to worry about the over­all qual­ity of olive oil sold in France. What (the DGCCRT report) high­lights is the effec­tive­ness of our fraud detec­tion ser­vices.- Alexandra Paris, com­mu­ni­ca­tion direc­tor, France Olive

An analy­sis of the sam­ples found an incon­sis­tency between the label and the con­tents of the con­tainer in 80 per­cent of the oils sam­pled, includ­ing mul­ti­ple oils that did not meet the cri­te­ria for extra vir­gin.

“Nearly a third of the estab­lish­ments had at least one irreg­u­lar­ity, often related to label­ing,” the DGCCRF wrote in a sum­mary of the report. ​“Misleading indi­ca­tions of ori­gin, miss­ing manda­tory infor­ma­tion, or exces­sive val­u­a­tions such as ​‘primeur’ or ​‘rare selec­tion’ were noted.”

“An inspec­tion of a whole­saler-packer uncov­ered sev­eral fraud­u­lent prac­tices: the mis­use of an Italian brand, decep­tion regard­ing the qual­ity of the olive oil and the mis­use of an organic logo,” the report added. ​“Another inspec­tion resulted in the sanc­tion­ing of a mer­chant web­site that high­lighted the regional ori­gin of an olive oil that had been blended with an oil from Spain.”

See Also:New Method Detects Olive Oil Adulteration, Reduces Environmental Impact

Overall, the DGCCRT inves­ti­ga­tion, which took the sam­ples in 2022, involved more than 1,200 pro­fes­sion­als involved in pro­duc­ing or sell­ing olive oil, other edi­ble oils, honey, truf­fles, jams, choco­lates, spices, cof­fees, teas and gourmet gift boxes.

Despite the head­line find­ings from the report, advo­cates of the olive oil sec­tor in France argued that the inves­ti­ga­tion showed olive oil fraud remains a rel­a­tively minor issue and gov­ern­ment offi­cials are becom­ing bet­ter at iden­ti­fy­ing and pur­su­ing fraud­sters. 

“While over 105,000 met­ric tons are sold each year across more than 40,000 points of sale in France, the recent con­trols tar­geted just 223 pro­fes­sion­als and 139 sam­ples — often based on sus­pi­cion or prior tar­get­ing,” Alexandra Paris, the com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor at France Olive, the French Interprofessional Association of Olive Oil, told Olive Oil Times. 

“This explains the high anom­aly rate rel­a­tive to the num­ber of analy­ses. But it does not indi­cate wide­spread fraud,” she added. ​“When you com­pare the 76 anom­alies to the total num­ber of out­lets, the rate drops to just 0.2 per­cent. There’s no rea­son to worry about the over­all qual­ity of olive oil sold in France. What this high­lights is the effec­tive­ness of our fraud detec­tion ser­vices.”

The DGCCRF report comes months after a sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tion by con­sumer pro­tec­tion watch­dog 60 Million Consumers found qual­ity issues with all 22 olive oil sam­ples labeled extra vir­gin that it tested.

“The good news is that all the oils tested were com­pli­ant in terms of their fatty acid and sterol com­po­si­tion,” Patricia Chairopoulos, head of the food and envi­ron­ment at 60 Million Consumers, told France Info. 

“However, the results were not very good: most of the oils tested showed slight oxi­da­tion, a third of our panel [found] a sen­sory defect, and most impor­tantly, we found at least one con­t­a­m­i­nant in every bot­tle,” she added.

Chairopoulos said the orga­ni­za­tion iden­ti­fied phtha­lates, a salt or ester of a phthalic acid iden­ti­fied as a poten­tial endocrine dis­rup­tor, in every sam­ple. 

The orga­ni­za­tion also iden­ti­fied min­eral oil sat­u­rated hydro­car­bons (MOSH) and min­eral oil aro­matic hydro­car­bons (MOAH), both of which are known to be car­cino­genic, in sev­eral sam­ples.

Outside of France, recent food fraud pre­ven­tion efforts in Italy also iden­ti­fied sig­nif­i­cant irreg­u­lar­i­ties, with 72 crim­i­nal reports, 896 admin­is­tra­tive sanc­tions, 843 for­mal warn­ings and 76 seizures cor­re­spond­ing to the olive oil sec­tor in 2024.

At the European level, 74 olive oil sam­ples were flagged for non-com­for­ties with declared qual­ity and label­ing dur­ing cross-bor­der checks by the E.U. Alert and Cooperation Network in its 2024 report. 

“In 2024, E.U. mem­ber states issued 130 noti­fi­ca­tions on olive oil, 15 per­cent of them qual­i­fy­ing with cer­tainty as frauds of cross-bor­der nature,” the report said.

However, the European Commission has empha­sized that increased fraud and irreg­u­lar­ity alerts related to olive oil are not the result of a rise in fraud but instead in author­i­ties’ abil­ity to iden­tify fraud and notify other mem­ber states.