In the West is known as "liquid gold" of olive oil in China's market demand has been rising in recent years, statistics show that China's imports of olive oil in 2014 for 42,000 tons, is expected to 2020, will be a net increase of 1 ton per year to reach 100,000 tons. However, in Italy, including Carapelli (Carapelli), including a number of well-known brands of olive oil suspected of commercial fraud, with ordinary olive oil posing as extra virgin olive oil, is under investigation by the Italian authorities.

Sampling results

Supermarket nearly half of the olive oil

Substandard

British "Daily Mail" on the 11th, citing the words of the inspectors in Turin, Italy, reported that 20 bottles of olive oil labeled as "Extra Virgin" were sampled from the shelves of supermarkets, and the result was that 9 bottles of olive oil did not match the real name and were only ordinary olive oil, involving 7 manufacturers. ordinary olive oil, involving seven manufacturers, namely Carapelli, Santa Sabina, Bertolli, Coricelli, Sasso, Primadonna (Lidl's labeling factory) and Antica Badia.

Rolando Manfredini, an expert with the Italian Farmers Association, said: "I don't think it's a misunderstanding but possibly a fraudulent attempt to bypass regulation."

Behind the scenes

Olive oil counterfeiting scams

The profits are staggering

Olive oil is by no means cheap, so there are many manufacturers who succumb to temptation and cut corners. The most common scam is to adulterate extra virgin olive oil with inferior products - such as low-grade virgin olive oil, which has a high acid content and is not good for human health. There is another way of counterfeiting: substituting another oil altogether. The substitutes often come from outside Europe, where production costs are lower.

Italy's olive oil industry is worth billions of euros a year, but last year's low olive yields, due to weather and pest problems, saw Italian olive oil production fall by a third to its lowest since 1991. Extra-virgin olive oil production has been reduced, and prices have soared.

Italy's big-name extra-virgin olive oil sells for 8.5 euros (58 yuan) a liter, while a liter of regular olive oil sells for less than 5 euros (34 yuan).

Back in 2011, two Spanish businessmen were jailed for selling extra virgin oil that was actually 75 percent sunflower oil. And it gets worse: in September 1991, a shipment of Turkish hazelnut oil arrived in Italy after a long voyage, with a piece of paper claiming to be "Greek olive oil".