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Another major olive oil scan­dal, this time in France, was reported by La Provence, in the famous Provence region known as being one of the best for qual­ity olive oil pro­duc­tion.

Accord­ing to the report, between Sep­tem­ber 2014 and Jan­u­ary 2015, 120 tons of Span­ish olives were intro­duced in the mills in the region before the oil pro­duced was put in bot­tles and sold under pres­ti­gious labels and enti­tled to the AOP (appel­la­tion d’o­rig­ine pro­tégée) des­ig­na­tion that is sup­posed to cer­tify the ori­gin of the prod­ucts.
See more: Arti­cles on Olive Oil Fraud
In the small town Mouriès, a man finally admit­ted his guilt, explain­ing that he wanted to make ille­gal prof­its after the rav­ages caused by the olive fruit fly. He decided to import and mix the olives from Provence with some from Andalu­sia (Spain) with the help of another man.

The Span­ish olives were brought to nine dif­fer­ent mills in three areas: five in the Bouches-du-Rhône, one between Arles and Lan­con-Provence, three in the Var and Gard.

Once pressed, the Span­ish olives were sold under three dif­fer­ent labels: AOP Val­lée des Baux, AOP Provence and Olives françaises. What was also being inves­ti­gated was whether the mills, some of which are well-known, dealt with the sus­pect know­ingly.

“Lying about the ori­gin of olives leads to fraud in France” said one per­son who is close to the case. In five months, the oper­a­tion was believed to have gen­er­ated €300,000 ($334,663) in sales.

“It is quite pos­si­ble that millers have shut their eyes on the ori­gin of the olives. With the dam­age caused by the olives flies, it thus suited every­one,” com­mented one per­son work­ing on the case. Span­ish olives are a frac­tion of the cost of the local French ones.

The­o­ret­i­cally, a seller must pro­vide the mill with a plot state­ment which brings a guar­an­tee to the ori­gin of his goods. The sus­pect, who knew the mar­ket quite well but was not grow­ing his own olives, used an old doc­u­ment from some­one else.

“Even though the fraud is seri­ous, it could only affect 7 or 8 per­cent of the total vol­ume of oil,” said Olivier Nasles, the pres­i­dent of Afi­dol (the inter-pro­fes­sion olive oil asso­ci­a­tion in France).

There have been sev­eral fraud cases like this one in France and in Europe. In 2005, Afi­dol spoke of sev­eral tons of oil made from Span­ish olives and sold under the ​“Provence” or sim­i­lar labels by two sell­ers based in Arles.

In 2012, it was esti­mated that one bot­tle out of four sold in the famous mar­kets of Provence was actu­ally car­ry­ing a fraud­u­lent label.

Many frauds in the 2014 – 2015 har­vest sea­son are thought to have occurred, mainly due to the drop in oil pro­duc­tion in Provence caused by the olive fly.

In 2012, an Ital­ian study pub­lished by La Repub­blica esti­mated that 4 bot­tles out of 5 sold as ​“Ital­ian” extra vir­gin olive oil were actu­ally cut with for­eign oil.

In early 2015, the Euro­pean Union rein­forced its con­trols and penal­ties for olive oil fraud, but there is still a lot to be done. In France, it is the DGCCRF (Direc­torate Gen­eral for Com­pe­ti­tion, Con­sumer Affairs and Fraud Con­trol) which tracks such prac­tices. The lat­est results pub­lished in Jan­u­ary, showed that 348 places were checked, at dif­fer­ent stages of the pro­duc­tion process.

There were many label prob­lems in the find­ings. In 8 per­cent of the inspected oils, the ori­gins were not spec­i­fied. Some labels also men­tioned that the oil was of French ori­gin, even though it was not the case. And the DGCCRF have seen cases of bot­tles with­out labels or with an incom­plete label or only in a for­eign lan­guage.

Pro­tected des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin (PDO) or con­trolled des­ig­na­tions of ori­gin (AOC) are some­times used indis­crim­i­nately, refer­ring to a non-AOC, for exam­ple such as ​“AOC Provence.”

The total of 46 per­cent non-com­pli­ant sam­ples still showed some progress as it rep­re­sented a drop from 57.3 per­cent in 2014. ​“The edu­ca­tional effort under­taken by small com­pa­nies in this sec­tor seems to be work­ing,” said the DGCCRF.