Olive Oil Products Fraud Uncovered in China

China Central Television (CCTV), the state-run broad­caster, has reported that an inspec­tion by the Food Safety Office in Fujian Province, on China’s south­east­ern coast, has uncov­ered a fraud scheme in which three Chinese cook­ing-oil com­pa­nies deceived cus­tomers by inten­tion­ally mis­la­bel­ing blended oil prod­ucts by over­stat­ing the per­cent­age of olive oil they con­tained.

Jinong Food Company, whose cook­ing oil was labeled six per­cent olive oil, was found to con­tain only three per­cent. Oil pro­duced by Tianshun Grains & Oils Company also adver­tised six per­cent olive oil, but actu­ally con­tained two per­cent. And Xihai Grains, Oils and Food Company, sold a prod­uct said to have five per­cent olive oil, which retailed for less than half the cost of sim­i­lar prod­ucts by com­pa­ra­ble brands, call­ing its authen­tic­ity into ques­tion. Some prod­ucts were labeled ​“extra vir­gin oil” in large char­ac­ters, with ​“blended oil” in the fine print.

China over­hauled its food safety reg­u­la­tions after a series of domes­tic and inter­na­tional food scares, ill­nesses and deaths. But food-label­ing fraud remains wide­spread in the coun­try, a fact reflected in the offend­ing com­pany rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ atti­tudes toward wrong­do­ing.

“Olive oil is very expen­sive,” said Li Mingyu, gen­eral man­ager at Tianshun. ​“You can’t expect a lot with the price we are sell­ing for.”

Luo Dingfa, direc­tor of sales at Xihai, viewed the sit­u­a­tion with equal dis­re­gard: ​“My bot­tom line is that no one will die from eat­ing this. I can live with my con­science.”

The China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), which reg­u­lates food label­ing, has imposed stricter rules to make it more dif­fi­cult to inflate nutri­tional claims on labels. The law pro­hibits the use of larger and col­ored text to mis­lead con­sumers and, in the case of valu­able com­modi­ties like olive oil, prod­ucts must include the per­cent­age of the char­ac­ter­iz­ing ingre­di­ent.

Hybrid oils have been embraced in China, the United States and other coun­tries, who say blended olive oils are fine, as long as con­sumers know exactly what they are get­ting. But Europe has been less wel­com­ing. The European Commission’s Advisory Group on Olives and Derived Products has said that prod­ucts offer­ing a mix of olive oil and other oils pose a risk to qual­ity and trans­parency in the indus­try.

China’s impor­ta­tion of olive oil has increased sig­nif­i­cantly in recent years, as wealthy Chinese con­sumers in search of pre­mium European prod­ucts have rapidly switched to olive oil for cook­ing, cre­at­ing a brisk trade in bot­tles from Spain, Italy and Greece.

Growing demand has also spurred ille­gal oper­a­tions stretch­ing from Beijing to Guangzhou churn­ing out out­dated, mis­la­beled, infe­rior and coun­ter­feit olive oil.

Last July, police in Shanghai charged five peo­ple with ille­gally sell­ing olive oil with forged expi­ra­tion dates, includ­ing Italian brands Clemente and San Giuliano, and Spanish brand Natura. Authorities seized 10,000 bot­tles val­ued at $1.32 mil­lion; the sus­pects had already sold expired oil to deal­ers in a dozen provinces and cities across the coun­try.

• South China Morning Post


• CCTV News Report (in Chinese)