Italy intensified its efforts against food fraud in 2024 by focusing heavily on olive oil. The Italian Inspectorate for Quality and Fraud Prevention (ICQRF) conducted over 8,200 inspections targeting vegetable oils out of a total of 54,000 food inspections. These checks included samples of extra virgin olive oil, with 23% of them revealing irregularities—such as discrepancies between product labels and actual contents. The operation resulted in 72 criminal reports, 896 administrative penalties, 843 formal warnings, and the seizure of 455,000 kg of non-compliant olive oil, worth more than €4 million (oliveoiltimes.com).

This initiative leverages Italy’s national digital olive oil registry (RTO), real-time monitoring, and a specialized enforcement unit to track and prevent fraud. In 2023, actions included uncovering mismatches between physical inventories and digital records in Veneto, intercepting schemes in Umbria and Tuscany that repackaged seed or lampante oils as premium Italian extra virgin, and halting sales of mislabeled products—like €230,000 worth of non-Taggiasca oil sold as authentic in Liguria. The program even led to cross-border interventions, such as seizing nearly 92 tons of misbranded vegetable oil at Italy’s border with France. (oliveoiltimes.com)

If this much was caught how much gets through?