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The Great Olive Oil Conspiracy

 

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COMMENT: A triv­ial-seem­ing sto­ry is actu­al­ly quite reveal­ing.

An EU (read “Ger­man”) ban on small, open con­tain­ers olive oil served with meals in Euro­pean restau­rants is osten­si­bly aimed at help­ing pro­duc­ers of olive oil in–get this–Italy, Spain, Greece and Por­tu­gal.

It just so hap­pens, of course, that these nations com­prise most of the so-called PIIGS–the ail­ing economies of that trou­bled con­ti­nent.

It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that this move is actu­al­ly aimed at help­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers in those afflict­ed coun­tries. In all prob­a­bil­i­ty, it will HURT small farm­ers, there­by exac­er­bat­ing the already dire eco­nom­ic con­di­tions that obtain there.

One won­ders if the slack will be tak­en up by either an overt­ly Ger­man-owned or con­trolled con­sor­tium, or a Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work-con­trolled enti­ty.

“EU to Ban Olive Oil Jugs from Restau­rants” by Bruno Water­field; The Tele­graph [UK]; 5/17/2013.

EXCERPT: The small glass jugs filled with green or gold coloured extra vir­gin olive oil are famil­iar and tra­di­tion­al for restau­rant goers across Europe but they will be banned from 1 Jan­u­ary 2014 after a deci­sion tak­en in an obscure Brus­sels com­mit­tee ear­li­er this week.

From next year olive oil “pre­sent­ed at a restau­rant table” must be in pre-pack­aged, fac­to­ry bot­tles with a tam­per-proof dis­pens­ing noz­zle and labelling in line with EU indus­tri­al stan­dards.

The use of clas­sic, refill­able glass jugs or glazed ter­ra­cot­ta dip­ping bowls and the choice of a restau­ra­teur to buy olive oil from a small arti­san pro­duc­er or fam­i­ly busi­ness will be out­lawed.

Sam Clark, the food writer, chef and pro­pri­etor of the award win­ning Moro restau­rant in Lon­don, told The Dai­ly Tele­graph that the ban would stop him serv­ing his cus­tomers spe­cial­ly select­ed Span­ish olive oil in dip­ping bowls with bread when they are seat­ed at their table. 
“Yet more pack­ag­ing is not going to be eco-friend­ly and will lim­it choice to more mass pro­duced prod­ucts.”

Mr Clark attacked the reg­u­la­tion as one that would kill off arti­san pro­duc­ers and accel­er­ate the demise in Europe of tra­di­tion­al ways of mak­ing and serv­ing food, in favour of large indus­tri­al pro­duc­ers. “It is very upset­ting. Haven’t they already done enough dam­age to arti­san prod­ucts?,” he said. 

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sions jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the ban, under spe­cial Com­mon Agri­cul­ture Pol­i­cy reg­u­la­tions, is “hygiene” and to pro­tect the “image of olive oil” with a mea­sure that will ben­e­fit strug­gling indus­tri­al pro­duc­ers in Spain, Italy, Greece and Por­tu­gal. . . .

. . . “This is sort of thing that gets the EU a deserved­ly bad name. I should­n’t say so but I hope peo­ple dis­obey this ban,” said an offi­cial.
“It will seem bonkers that olive oil jugs must go while vine­gar bot­tles or refill­able wine jugs can stay.”

Respond­ing to the ban, Mar­tin Callanan MEP, the leader of the Euro­pean Con­ser­v­a­tive and Reformist group, asked: “Is it April 1st?”. . .

Discussion

7 comments for “The Great Olive Oil Conspiracy”

  1. Here’s an arti­cle from last Octo­ber about how Euro­pean olive oil pro­duc­ers are almost exclu­sive­ly look­ing to expand in non-EU mar­kets sim­ply because there’s cur­rent­ly a sat­u­ra­tion of dif­fer­ent brands in the Euro­pean olive oil mar­ket. That sug­gests that the prof­it mar­gins are quite low in the sec­tor. It also implies a lot of small inde­pen­dent olive oil pro­duc­ers are still in busi­ness...for now:

    Just-Food
    SIAL: Olive oil indus­try looks beyond Europe for growth

    By Katy Askew | 26 Octo­ber 2012

    The Euro­pean olive oil indus­try is eye­ing expan­sion in India, Asia and the Mid­dle East to fuel growth, with the sat­u­rat­ed Euro­pean mar­ket offer­ing lit­tle poten­tial.

    Olive oil mak­ers have been out in full force at this year’s SIAL trade show in Paris, with exhibitors trav­el­ling from the major Euro­pean olive oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries of Spain, Greece and Italy.

    How­ev­er, the indus­try is look­ing beyond the EU as it looks to grow sales. Accord­ing to one trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Spain, the Euro­pean mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed and the strength of Euro­pean retail­ers means that prices are “too cheap” despite the up-scale nature of the prod­uct.

    Greece’s H&H Hel­lenic Her­itage offers three olive oil prod­ucts — organ­ic, PDO and con­ven­tion­al extra vir­gin — in con­ven­tion­al pack­ag­ing that, MD Olga Labuti­na-Tzolou claimed, makes the brand “very dif­fer­ent”.

    “Europe is a dif­fi­cult mar­ket in gen­er­al because it is so sat­u­rat­ed with the brands already,” Labuti­na-Tzolou told just-food yes­ter­day (25 Octo­ber). “Of course, we don’t mind being in Europe — the UK, France and Ger­many — but I believe that the big­ger point would be to be in Scan­di­na­vian and north­ern coun­tries because the mar­ket there still has a lit­tle bit of poten­tial.”

    H&H has estab­lished a joint ven­ture in India, Deli Foods, and is expand­ing in the east of the coun­try hav­ing secured list­ings with Pan­taloon Retail’s Food Bazaar super­mar­kets and with Spencers. The com­pa­ny is also “very inter­est­ed” in Japan, Chi­na, Brazil, Latin Amer­i­ca and Rus­sia.

    Like­wise, Span­ish firm Abril aims to expand its olive oil offer­ing in Chi­na, Japan and the Mid­dle East. While the group does have a pres­ence in Europe, export man­ag­er Ray­mond Gal­je said that “there are so many brands if you go to a super­mar­ket you have from five des­ti­na­tions the super­mar­kets own brand”.

    Accord­ing to Gal­je, this lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion makes the cost of com­pet­ing in Euro­pean mar­kets chal­leng­ing.

    “To get in there you have to bring some­thing dif­fer­ent. A lot of mar­ket­ing. A lot of study. It is doable but you have to real­ly put the effort in.”

    ...

    This is anoth­er sto­ry that reminds us that it’s very dif­fi­cult to be “pro-aus­ter­i­ty” and “pro-small busi­ness”. Bunge’s Euro­pean veg­etable oil divi­sion, for instance, should prob­a­bly be able to roll with this punch...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2013, 8:55 pm
  2. Here’s an arti­cle from last Octo­ber about how Euro­pean olive oil pro­duc­ers are almost exclu­sive­ly look­ing to expand in non-EU mar­kets sim­ply because there’s cur­rent­ly a sat­u­ra­tion of dif­fer­ent brands in the Euro­pean olive oil mar­ket. That sug­gests that the prof­it mar­gins are quite low in the sec­tor. It also implies a lot of small inde­pen­dent olive oil pro­duc­ers are still in busi­ness...for now:

    Just-Food
    SIAL: Olive oil indus­try looks beyond Europe for growth

    By Katy Askew | 26 Octo­ber 2012

    The Euro­pean olive oil indus­try is eye­ing expan­sion in India, Asia and the Mid­dle East to fuel growth, with the sat­u­rat­ed Euro­pean mar­ket offer­ing lit­tle poten­tial.

    Olive oil mak­ers have been out in full force at this year’s SIAL trade show in Paris, with exhibitors trav­el­ling from the major Euro­pean olive oil pro­duc­ing coun­tries of Spain, Greece and Italy.

    How­ev­er, the indus­try is look­ing beyond the EU as it looks to grow sales. Accord­ing to one trade rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Spain, the Euro­pean mar­ket is sat­u­rat­ed and the strength of Euro­pean retail­ers means that prices are “too cheap” despite the up-scale nature of the prod­uct.

    Greece’s H&H Hel­lenic Her­itage offers three olive oil prod­ucts — organ­ic, PDO and con­ven­tion­al extra vir­gin — in con­ven­tion­al pack­ag­ing that, MD Olga Labuti­na-Tzolou claimed, makes the brand “very dif­fer­ent”.

    “Europe is a dif­fi­cult mar­ket in gen­er­al because it is so sat­u­rat­ed with the brands already,” Labuti­na-Tzolou told just-food yes­ter­day (25 Octo­ber). “Of course, we don’t mind being in Europe — the UK, France and Ger­many — but I believe that the big­ger point would be to be in Scan­di­na­vian and north­ern coun­tries because the mar­ket there still has a lit­tle bit of poten­tial.”

    H&H has estab­lished a joint ven­ture in India, Deli Foods, and is expand­ing in the east of the coun­try hav­ing secured list­ings with Pan­taloon Retail’s Food Bazaar super­mar­kets and with Spencers. The com­pa­ny is also “very inter­est­ed” in Japan, Chi­na, Brazil, Latin Amer­i­ca and Rus­sia.

    Like­wise, Span­ish firm Abril aims to expand its olive oil offer­ing in Chi­na, Japan and the Mid­dle East. While the group does have a pres­ence in Europe, export man­ag­er Ray­mond Gal­je said that “there are so many brands if you go to a super­mar­ket you have from five des­ti­na­tions the super­mar­kets own brand”.

    Accord­ing to Gal­je, this lev­el of com­pe­ti­tion makes the cost of com­pet­ing in Euro­pean mar­kets chal­leng­ing.

    “To get in there you have to bring some­thing dif­fer­ent. A lot of mar­ket­ing. A lot of study. It is doable but you have to real­ly put the effort in.”

    ...

    This is anoth­er sto­ry that reminds us that it’s very dif­fi­cult to be “pro-aus­ter­i­ty” and “pro-small busi­ness” because “aus­ter­i­ty” poli­cies seem to focus around cre­at­ing sud­den shifts in the econ­o­my to “shock” it into bet­ter health. It sounds like this could to be a rather shock­ing for the small olive oil pro­duc­ers. Bunge’s Euro­pean veg­etable oil divi­sion, on the oth­er hand, should prob­a­bly be able to roll with this punch...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 22, 2013, 10:26 pm
  3. And the great olive oil con­spir­a­cy of 2013 is no more:

    EU Per­forms Abrupt U‑Turn on Olive Oil Reg­u­la­tion

    BRUSSELS May 23, 2013 (AP)

    The EU has some­thing impor­tant to say about its pro­pos­al to reg­u­late olive oil on restau­rant tables: Uh, nev­er mind.

    Last week, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, the EU’s exec­u­tive branch, said that restau­rants should only be allowed to serve oil to cus­tomers in non-refill­able bot­tles with prop­er con­tent label­ing. The refill­able bot­tles are a sta­ple on restau­rant tables across Europe for din­ers who want to douse bread or sal­ads.

    The EU said its rul­ing would pre­vent restau­rants from serv­ing low qual­i­ty oil and improve hygiene. But it also prompt­ed ridicule by EU crit­ics, who said it showed the author­i­ties in Brus­sels are out of touch with the real world.

    On Thurs­day, the Com­mis­sion said it was with­draw­ing the pro­pos­al because not enough mem­ber nations had sup­port­ed it.

    This sto­ry is also a reminder that it’s dif­fi­cult to fair­ly imple­ment reg­u­la­tions when you have small busi­ness com­pet­ing with a car­tel of glob­al multi­na­tion­al agri-giants. The argu­ments we often hear against new reg­u­la­tions that ‘reg­u­la­tions hurt small busi­ness­es because they can’t adjust to the new rules as eas­i­ly as their larg­er com­peti­tors’ is sort of true.

    Maybe, if peo­ple real­ly cared about the integri­ty of “the mar­ket”, we should pon­der the fact that things like small busi­ness and democ­ra­cy appear to be increas­ing incom­pat­i­ble with things like glob­al multi­na­tion­al car­tels. And maybe some­thing should be done about it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 23, 2013, 8:21 am
  4. Although I agree with the tone of the post Dave, the EU does have a well deserved rep­u­ta­tion for anal micro-man­age­ment of their agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor, how­ev­er, there is a huge amount of fraud in the olive oil trade, with much of it con­trolled by orga­nized crime.

    Here is a report by UC Davis, that shows that much of the import­ed “extra vir­gin” olive oil on our super­mar­ket shelves, is actu­al­ly low­er grade oils.

    http://olivecenter.ucdavis.edu/news-events/news/files/olive%20oil%20final%20071410%20.pdf

    Here is a LA Times arti­cle that sum­ma­rizes the UC Davis study:

    http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/15/business/la-fi-olive-oil-20100715

    Posted by Vanfield | May 23, 2013, 3:04 pm
  5. Thank you VANFIELD. If any­one knows of a good brand I’m all ears. I think of Olive Oil as a sta­ple.

    Posted by James S. | May 23, 2013, 7:25 pm
  6. @Vanfield: It sounds like pre­vent­ing fraud was one of the stat­ed goals of the pol­i­cy and that’s also one of the rea­sons it was reversed today because the new pol­i­cy would­n’t actu­al­ly do any­thing about mis­la­beled olive oil. Most of the fraud report­ed­ly takes place dur­ing the pro­duc­tion process and not the at the restau­rants:

    EU slips up with olive oil ban, changes plans

    Thu May 23, 2013 7:11am EDT

    * Com­mis­sion with­draws ban on olive oil jugs in restau­rants

    * Farm chief says pro­pos­als lacked con­sumer sup­port

    * Move fol­lows accu­sa­tions of inter­fer­ence by Brus­sels

    By Char­lie Dun­more

    BRUSSELS, May 23 (Reuters) — The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion has decid­ed to tear up new rules on how restau­rants should serve olive oil less than a week after unveil­ing them, fol­low­ing wide­spread ridicule and accu­sa­tions of unwant­ed inter­fer­ence.

    Last week, the Com­mis­sion said restau­rants would be banned from serv­ing oil to din­ers in refill­able glass jugs or dip­ping bowls from next year. Instead, to pro­tect con­sumers from fraud, restau­rants would have to use sealed, non-refill­able bot­tles that must be dis­posed of when emp­ty.

    ...

    One of the first ques­tions raised after the ban was pre­sent­ed was how on earth it was going to be policed, with crit­ics won­der­ing whether there would now be olive oil “police” cir­cu­lat­ing at night to check on restau­rants.

    But it was also ques­tioned whether the ban was real­ly about pro­tect­ing con­sumers or more about sup­port­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers in south­ern Europe, with Greece, Spain, Italy and Por­tu­gal all suf­fer­ing as a result of the eco­nom­ic cri­sis.

    And while pro­po­nents said the pro­posed ban was about stop­ping fraud, experts point­ed out that much of the fraud involv­ing olive oil actu­al­ly hap­pens before it reach­es restau­rant tables, with pro­duc­ers blend­ing infe­ri­or oil with high­er qual­i­ty prod­uct and labelling it “vir­gin olive oil”.

    It’s inter­est­ing that we had peo­ple ques­tion­ing whether or not this was sim­ply intend­ed to pro­tect the south­ern Euro­pean pro­duc­ers while we simul­ta­ne­ous­ly had the arti­san pro­duc­ers com­plain­ing that this was going to dri­ve them out of busi­ness. So you have to won­der which seg­ment of the indus­try is more like­ly to be sell­ing adul­ter­at­ed oils: the small arti­sans or the big con­glom­er­ates? The big pro­duc­ers would cer­tain­ly have the resources to deal with new reg­u­la­tions more eas­i­ly, but big con­glom­er­ates also appear to gen­er­al­ly be run by peo­ple that would sell you poi­son if it made a prof­it. At the same time, mafia involve­ment in the sec­tor might more eas­i­ly oper­ate under the radar as a small pro­duc­er. So who knows how the preva­lence of fraud might be impact­ed if the arti­sans are pref­er­en­tial­ly put out of busi­ness and the big boys just gob­ble up more of the mar­ket share. Based on that 2010 UCLA study, the answer seems unclear.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 23, 2013, 8:57 pm
  7. @Pterrafractyl and Van­field–

    The sus­pi­cious thing about the orig­i­nal EU rul­ing was the stat­ed objec­tive of “hygiene” being the ratio­nale for the ban of open con­tain­ers.

    Sup­pos­ed­ly, icky germs would­n’t be rav­aging patrons of fine din­ing estab­lish­ments in Europe.

    This would lim­it mar­ket access for small pro­duc­ers, not “help” them in any way.

    Nor does the “hygiene” ratio­nale impinge on label­ing fraud in the food indus­try, which is rife.

    The mafia is indeed deeply involved with the food industry–read “Vicious Cir­cles” by the late Jonathan Kwit­ny.

    Thanks­giv­ing, for exam­ple, is a big mon­ey-mak­ing time for wise guys–everyone wants a turkey for the fam­i­ly table on that hol­i­day.

    Orga­nized crime makes a lot of mon­ey get­ting unhealthy turkeys to mar­ket, where they are sold as “bar­gains” to poor folks, who con­sume unhealthy fare.

    The mob is deeply involved with all sorts of busi­ness­es, large and small.

    Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, their alliances would be with the larg­er pro­duc­ers, not the small. They would be act­ing to can­ni­bal­ize or elim­i­nate small­er com­peti­tors and infil­trate and co-opt larg­er firms.

    Again, the notion that ban­ning open con­tain­ers of olive oil to safe­guard the “hygiene” of din­ers does­n’t even begin to ring true.

    The notion that such a rul­ing would be to “pro­tect” the olive oil pro­duc­ers in Greece, Por­tu­gal, Italy and Spain is Orwellian–Newspeak at its worst.

    THAT is why I thought the ini­tial rul­ing news­wor­thy.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | May 24, 2013, 2:25 pm

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