`Italy Requires Olive Oil Mills to Register Sales and Purchases Online - Olive Oil Times
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enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Italy Requires Olive Oil Mills to Register Sales and Purchases Online

By Lucy Vivante
Aug. 19, 2011 15:45 UTC
Summary Summary

A new law in Italy requires whole­sale olive oil millers to reg­is­ter their pur­chases and sales on an online report­ing sys­tem, the SIAN, in an effort to gather data and pre­vent fraud­u­lent prac­tices. Some millers feel dis­ad­van­taged by the new sys­tem due to exemp­tions for retail millers, time con­straints, con­cerns about hack­ing, and poten­tial added costs, pos­si­bly due to lower inter­net usage rates in Italy com­pared to the U.S.

Wholesale olive oil millers are now required to reg­is­ter their pur­chases and sales on the web­site of the Sistema Informativo Agricolo Nazionale or National Agriculture Information System (SIAN), an online report­ing sys­tem used by var­i­ous agri­cul­tural sec­tors in Italy.

The law went into effect in July, in advance of the Fall 2011 har­vest. In the past, report­ing was done on paper. The pur­pose of the new sys­tem is to gather data and cut down on fraud­u­lent prac­tices such as mis­rep­re­sent­ing olive oil prove­nance.

There are some whole­sale millers who feel dis­ad­van­taged because millers who retail their own olive oil are exempted from hav­ing to reg­is­ter their activ­i­ties. Others com­plain about time issues — each trans­ac­tion is sup­posed to be reg­is­tered within six days of its occur­rence. Still oth­ers have com­plained that the sys­tem could be hacked and crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion, such as client lists, could be pub­lished and used by com­peti­tors.

The ques­tion of added costs is also con­tribut­ing to push back. Just over half of Italy’s pop­u­la­tion uses the Internet (ver­sus over 75 per­cent in the U.S.) and this could explain some of the resis­tance.

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