“Beware”: Is Your Olive Oil Just Olive Oil?

As the price of olive oil continues to rise, food fraud cases related to this product are reportedly on the rise worldwide.

• Read more: “Worrying” rise in food prices in May

• Read more: Inflation is slightly higher in Canada

This is what Sylvain Charlebois, an agri-food expert at Dalhousie University, says in an interview with LCN.

He says the price of olive oil has doubled in just 18 months.

“People are choosing other types of vegetable oil, such as the increasingly popular avocado oil and sunflower oil,” explains the expert. Prices will remain stable, but we don’t expect a drop.

This phenomenon encourages fraudulent schemes to dilute this product with other oils.

“What worries us the most is food fraud,” says Mr. Charlebois. Olive oil is always a good target for fraud. Also, we were in a meeting [mardi] In Spain and Greece and in Europe, it is estimated that 20% of olive oil is substituted. We added another type of oil with olive oil.

“We don’t know what’s going on in Canada, but I have a feeling there are cases in Canada because of the high cost,” he adds. We are exposed to these types of fraudulent activities when prices increase and the prices of certain commodities explode.

Finding these programs is sometimes very difficult.

“It’s hard to really taste the difference,” says the expert. In Europe there are professionals who can do this, but in Canada, it is always difficult. That’s why I encourage people to go to specialty stores and make sure they buy them. Sometimes there are very popular brands that can be fraudulent, unfortunately.

Therefore, the expert advises to be wary of deals, but take advantage of them if you trust the merchant.

“In the agri-food sector, price cuts are very rare,” he says. So if you see olive oil being sold, be cautious first, ask yourself if it’s really olive oil, but if you trust the seller, buy it, because it doesn’t happen very often.

Watch the full interview in the video above