Italy's massive olive oil industry is fighting an image problem after it was revealed that seven large producers were marketing low-grade oil as if it were a top-notch product.
Italy is the world's second largest producer of olive oil after Spain, but is the world's leading olive oil exporter and is the top producer of extra-virgin oil, the highest and most prestigious grade for green- and golden-colored liquid.
The seven companies named in the probe are all major commercial olive oil producers, accused of attempting to pass virgin oil - a lower quality - off as extra virgin olive oil.
The extra-virgin product is made soon after olives are picked from the trees in a process that does not use any chemicals or artificial heat in the refining process. The result is a product that contains no more than 0.8 percent acidity with a "pure" taste as judged by an expert panel. Virgin oil can contain a level of acidity almost twice as high and is allowed to have some minor sensory defects.
Products from the seven producers were discovered by a consumer magazine in May and then repeated by a special government body and determined to be of a lower quality. The findings were made public earlier this month.
Prosecutors in the northern Italian city of Turin are investigating the findings to determine whether to press charges against the producers.
The scandal is the latest to hit the enormous Italian food industry. In recent years, Italian wine, cheese, and truffle production have all been marked by fraud investigations.
"The damage from this is very large, both for consumers and for the image of Italian food products," Rosario Trefiletti, president of the Federconsumatori consumer advocacy group, said in an interview.
The Italian government and Coldiretti, the country's main agriculture sector lobby group, both tried to minimize the damage from the ongoing investigations.
Italian Minister of Agriculture Maurizio Martina said in a statement that the country is continually tightening controls, and that the recent findings are proof the system works.
"It is vital to protect a sector as important as the one for olive oil," the minister said.
Nicola Di Noia, head of the olive oil division for Coldiretti, agreed: "These products were discovered as they should have been," Di Noia told Xinhua. "We want to make product testing even more stringent so we can be sure inferior products never make it to the market."
Regardless of the steps taken, the polling firm Opinioni said some level of damage has already been done.
"People have a tendency to remember negative news much longer than anything positive," Opinioni's marketing specialist Rosanna Marchetti said in an interview. "People still talk about the Brunello wine scandal from 2008. It makes an impression on the mind of consumers."
According to Leonardo Surico, director of the MediaCom communications group and the son of an olive oil producer, consumers looking to pay low prices for high-quality products help force the hand of producers.
"You see extra virgin olive oil in the supermarket for 5 or 6 euros (5.30 to 6.36 U.S. dollars) a bottle ... what do consumers expect?" Surico told Xinhua. "You can't make extra virgin oil for double that price. It's irresponsible. If consumers demand it and buy that product they force producers to cut corners."
