Does this mean this olive oil is not virgin anymore
It never was virgin olive oil. It was low quality oil mixed with better quality oil, but none of it virgin.
OnlyOils
I’m pretty sure this was supposed to be a clever pun, but thanks for the info nonetheless
The Iberian peninsula is slowly but surely desertifying. Part of it is due to climate change, sure, but it doesn’t help that governments aren’t willing to pass and enforce regulations against the mass cultivation of plants that require huge amounts of water, such as avocados, in regions that do not naturally receive as much rain. If we keep stupidly trying to use more water than we need and the local ecosystems can afford, it’s only logical sooner or later we’d have these issues with olives, amongst many other troubles.
“Get in, get rich, get out.”
The people profiting off of this don’t care about the sustainability of their actions. Once they’ve sucked the land dry, they’ll just use their profits to do it somewhere else.
The only people who lose are the poor people who are stuck with the shitty land.
While there are very notorious exceptions, a lot of the landowners and politicians committing and allowing this crime come from families who have lived in the territory for generations without having ever loved it, and would rather die rich in a desert than letting their children inherit green lands.
5,200 litres is NOTHING given the overall scale of the problem.
Is black market olive oil a big issue for the average Spaniard or Italian?
It’s a big issue globally.
What’s the problem?
Low quality olive oil, and in some cases entirely counterfeit olive oil, being branded and sold as extra virgin olive oil.
It’s a known problem globally:
https://www.wellandgood.com/fake-olive-oil/
Two good stats here:
“the US is the largest olive oil importer in the world, bringing in 375 thousand metric tons between 2021–2022. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with inspecting these imported foods. However, they openly state on their website that only one to two percent of the foods imported into this country are physically inspected.”
and:
“A 2010 study done out of University of California Davis really brought public attention to this issue, finding that 69 percent of imported olive oils didn’t meet international standards of identity for extra virgin olive oil.”
1 liter of olive oil weighs about 2 pounds, so 826,875,000 pounds of olive oil = 413,437,500 liters of olive oil brought into the US between 2021 and 2022 and as much as 70% to 80% of that has been adulterated in some way…
The problem is way bigger than confiscating 5,200 liters.
Adulterated sounds like the exact opposite of extra virgin.
What do you want to bet it’ll still end up in US markets somehow?
what do they cut it with?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The investigation, carried out by the Guardia Civil in conjunction with Italy’s carabinieri and Europol, led to raids in both countries and the searching of olive-processing cooperatives in the Spanish provinces of Ciudad Real, Jaén and Córdoba.
Suspicions were first raised when Guardia Civil officers discovered “a series of anomalies” while inspecting a lorry that was transporting olive oil in Ciudad Real region.
They soon uncovered a two-pronged operation in Spain and Italy that was designed to distribute adulterated olive oil on the global market.
News of the seizure came amid continuing high olive oil prices as drought and other adverse weather conditions affect European harvests for a second successive year.
Spanish production has been hit by drought and heatwaves of more than 40C, while the crisis has been exacerbated by extreme weather in other olive-producing countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Morocco.
Extra virgin olive oil is not the only Spanish culinary staple to fall victim to criminal gangs in recent years.
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