Australian Tabloid Exposes Bad Olive Oil (And It’s Australian)

Posted on February 19 2012 | Categorized in: Opinions

By Curtis Cord
Olive Oil Times Executive Editor
Follow @oliveoilvoice

The Big Olive: Rabih Moughelbay

The Adelaide edition of Today Tonight, an Australian tabloid television program, aired a report earlier this week on what it said was a four-month investigation into substandard olive oil.

At first it seemed like a rehashing of a segment from last summer that also starred the globetrotting Australian Olive Association President Paul Miller and a healthy dose of sensationalist reporting. But then there was one very surprising difference.

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This show started out with the same overstatement of Australia’s stature among olive oil consuming nations as the last time: “Australians are now the largest consumers of extra virgin olive oil outside of Mediterranean countries,” it said, again exhibiting a convenient unfamiliarity with the sometimes helpful qualifier, per capita.

And there was the obligatory analogy to drug trafficking and the standard badmouthing of imported olive oils. But then the show turned its sights on an Australian producer, Big Olive.

Waving test results from the Modern Olives lab, reporter Frank Pangallo (who received “anonymous threats in the course of his work” the lead-in said solemnly) chases Big Olive’s Rabih Moughelbay down a Kensington sidewalk.

Moughelbay doesn’t help matters when, from behind his big, dark sunglasses he shoots back “I’m not even a Christian but I’ll swear on the Bible that this is absolute crap, Frank!” before closing the door in Pangallo’s face.

Then there are interviews with disgruntled former workers, who have all sued the South Australian company, describing a “revolving door” workforce, unsanitary practices and the criminal relabeling of expired food.

The reports from Modern Olives suggested, according to the broadcast, that Big Olive’s oils found on supermarket shelves were old, adulterated and unfit for consumption.

Modern Olives tests also found to be substandard the private label olive oil imported for Australian MasterChef celeb George Calombaris.

When asked if he thought the segment would help address accusations that the campaign he leads is more about helping domestic producers than lifting olive oil quality, Miller told Olive Oil Times “There is no distinction in our minds between any olive oil. It is the case that most of the bad stuff comes from overseas but I have always stated that about 15 to 20 percent of Australian oil also needs to lift its game.”

“Some of that is happening for those certified domestic oils within the Code of Practice and we can see improvement,” Miller added, “but we do have our crooks like this guy.”

Readers want to know what you think. Please leave a comment and share this article with your friends.

This article was last updated February 20, 2012 - 9:33 AM (GMT-4)

Tags: Australian Olive Association, Media, Paul Miller

Richard G.
Hi Curtis – by labelling people as starring in something or being ‘a globetrotter’, aren’t you you also engaging in tabloid like reporting? Sure, Mr Miller travels a lot, but tell me one other person who has made such a differerence is such a short time in the olive oil world – unifying the Australian industry, puting in place an industry code of practice, instigating standards that scares the hell out of illegitimate producers while delighting the rest- so much so that they are being used as a model by countries. He does this mostly at his own expense both in time and in travel – and has done so for nearly 10 years. We need more of him, and less of the people who by encouraging the status quo, continue to profit from, (at best) mediocrity, and (at worst) deception.
Peter McFarlane
What an appalling piece of gutter journalism by Curtis Chord. Are you receiving a kickback from the IOC?
OliveGrower
This is only Part 1 of the video, please upload Part 2 also! (The whole segment goes for 16minutes, but Youtube will not allow more than 10mins for each video.) Please add the second part of the video so everyone can see the whole thing!!

Phil Stone
YouTube does allow videos that are more than 10 minutes long!!
OliveChirper
OliveGrower: if you watch Part 1 to the end, they give you a series of
related videos to watch; Part 2 is the video in the upper left, which
(for the moment) appears as a picture of bottles with red labels reading
“Extra Virgin Olive Oil.” You can also see them on the AOA website, or by clicking on the button that says “YouTube,”
which will let you watch Part 1 on a bigger screen and Part 2 will
appear on the right-hand side of the page as a related video.

Richard G.
If you are a member of the AOA, then you can have a say at the next Annual General Meeting. If not, you have no right to comment about what the AOA does. If you are a member, why not put yourself up as a Director or (even better) President? If you’re right, you’ll get voted in – landing an unpaid position involving a lot of work, and almost certainly will be out of pocket to some extent. But given that you posted under anonymous then I’m guessing that you won’t.
And incidentally, the Australians like almost all other countries can do all the internal investigations they like. The people who have the power to act rarely do unless public safety is at risk. So typically they only act under the weight of public pressure.
(Disclaimer- I was a Director of the AOA in 2004)
(Added Disclaimer – So I know what I’m talking about when it comes to working for an industry for nothing).
OliveChirper
I might agree with you if they had some minor off-tests, but this was pretty damned egregious behavior, and needed as big a smackdown as possible. I say thumbs up to AOA for not trying to hide the domestic industry’s dirty laundry, or circle the wagons around a domestic bad actor in order to project the illusion that Aussie oil is all wonderful and all the adulteration and shoddy product is cheap, foreign imports.
It’s a big improvement over the practices of the North American Olive Oil Association, who err on the opposite extreme, simultaneously claiming an absurdly low incidence of substandard oil detected in their testing regime (such as it is), and yet refuse to release the data for outside scrutiny.

Borrisziv
if one goes back in history of olive oils suplied to australia remember how imported olive oil used to smell stale fermenting olives which were picked from the ground and very expensive while here in aus they use mechanical tree shakers to get green olives and you can actualy smell green olives.i always buy 3l can aussie oil which is best so far especialy when on special i stock up .yes you will always have a rogue bussines to make quick $.you can smell good oil by its green olive smell and taste,so good you can drink it.
Richard G.
The Australian equivalent of the North American Olive Oil Association, the Australian Olive Oil Association (not to be confused with the Australian Olive Association) does the same – says it tests a lot, says it finds few problems, but never releases the results for external scrutiny. Same modus operandi. Not surprising really as both both bodies have been given the task of policing olive oil quality in their respective countries by the International Olive Council, which despite its name has the best interests of Mediterranean producers and those that import from them at heart.

Annamaria
sono felice che anche in Australia si denuncia la cattiva qualita’ dell’olio di oliva
Les Parsons
The Australians are not a bunch of lying crooks. This is one producer, covereing quite a few brands. Having only seeing the show now, on the Interenet, it proves the AOA has the guts to come out and expose the people who are destroying the industry. As an AOA member I fully support Paul, in this exposure. It should be applied to any other Australian producers who are lying to the public.
stan grant
The tabloid’s analogy of olivve oil to the drug trade is abosolutely correct when it comes to “cutting” the stuff.
Alantasmer
We need to set up our own star rating to our own standards,
which cover each of the bases requiredinternationally to be a premium oil. The oworld must follow us!!
The Olive Queen
Continue to name and shame those producers whom blatantly cheat the consumer I say!!! Congratulations to the Australian Olive Industry leaders for exposing this fraudulent actvity…. How can we maintain our integrity if we ignore or sweep behaviour such as this under the carpet? As for the article above, I expected so much better of the Olive Oil Times!!!
HTomicki
Graham this is exactly what I was thinking. The complaints are really that Mr. Cord called Mr. Miller a “globetrotter” (when he is one)? Or that Mr. Miller “starred” in this tv show (when he did)? Mr. McFarlane, why don’t you explain what you find so “appalling” or one-sided? I think it’s an interesting article and a few of these comments I find surprisingly weak.
Consumer
As a consumer Olive Oils are off the shopping List. Along with dozens of other foods,Australian food standards are now as bad as China’s. Unless people go to prison for frauds like this , and they dont ,then home and locally grown food and staples are all I care about because at least I can control the quality.Consumers have been told in no uncertain terms by successive governments and let down by industry bodies ”there is no one to protect them (consumers) from bad foods except themselves”
Pkrk14
This is al so maddening to me, I mean, where in G_d’s name can I buy good olive oil. All I want is a good reliable authentic bottle…

OliveChirper
For a handy guide to authentic, high-quality EVOO, see the “Buyer’s Guide to Olive Oil in North America” by Tom Mueller, author of the famous New Yorker magazine exposé on olive oil fraud, and more recently of the excellent book “Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil.”