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<pre>It is well known that the olive oil INDUSTRY uses these methods to fraud the
consumer. Mixing non olive oil with olive oil is illegal. Mixing refined
olive oil with extra vergine and sell it as extra vergine is illegal, too.
Selling non tuscan olive oil as tuscan is a little bit less illegal because
they use very tricky methods. The big italian brand Carapelli for instance
has made a big TV promotion that shows the Tuscan countryside while the
speaker talks with an +ACI-inconfondibile accento toscano+ACI- (a non confusable
tuscan accent). At the end he says 'Carapelli, the olive oil with the non
confusable tuscan accent' and I bet that nearly everybody believes that this
oil is tuscan oil. But they never say it. On the label you find the writing
'bottled in ... (some well known place in Tuscany)'. In reality, nobody
knows if this oil is made from tuscan or even italian olives , it is said
nowhere. The new European laws protect the industry, not the small producer
and not at all the consumer. I have not yet read the law but it looks like
that it is sufficient to add a certain quantity of italian olive oil to an
imported olive oil and they can call it 'italian'. In the USA things are
even worse, as we could read in one of the last messages, not even the term
'extra vergine' is protected, so they even don't fraud if they sell
something else.
These things make me very angry because they show me that often the
governments don't protect those who need protection (small producers,
consumers) but those who have the money to buy the politicians.
Volker
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