It's a lucrative business that’s worth billions of dollars for European exporters. However, some are flooding global markets with cheap products - and that's killing Australian producers, according Olive Oil Association president Paul Miller.
“Australia has been the target for European producers primarily for lower grade product, sadly sold off as extra virgin olive oil when in fact it's refined product, or worse still, oil that's well beyond its life, and really shouldn't be sold,” Miller said.
More stories from Today TonightThe industry is currently unregulated, making it a very slippery trade.
“There are serious cases of outright fraud in which dishonest oil traders and oil producers buy soy bean oil, sunflower seed oil, colour it with chlorophyll, flavour it with beta carotene, and sell the result as extra virgin olive oil,” author Tom Mueller said.The American has written a book about international olive oil fraud, which he says is rampant because it's so easy to fool consumers.
Today Tonight's latest food stories“Anyone who's in the business should be able to tell the difference between good oil and bad oil simply by the taste. But beyond that it's very simple, quite economical to run some chemical tests and monitor the quality of what you're getting,” Miller said.
But dodgy oils aren't only coming in from overseas. An investigation has exposed the shocking, sub-standard oils branded as premium quality by a major South Australian producer.
“Good olive oil is made from sound olives, that are in good shape, from healthy trees, and the key is getting the olives to the mill fairly quickly - like within 24 hours. Then it's easy to make extra virgin olive oil,” Miller explained.
More stories from reporter Frank PangalloThe Big Olive, a sprawling olive farm with modern processing facilities at Tailem Bend is owned by Joe Hani. Rabiah Mogulbay is his right hand man, the head of national and international sales and marketing.
“I am lucky to have been associated with good people around me that we could reach this level of success,” Hani said of his business.
Former policeman Sean Riley moved his family from New Zealand to be the farm manager. He ended up running the factory, until he quit, because promises he claims made to him by Hani were not met.
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“The thing that really just jumped out in front of me was the culture of the company that he was running was just so rotten. It was like a revolving door. A lot of the equipment was not compliant at all, and it was just a losing battle for me when I was managing that property to try and get things up on the straight and narrow,” Riley said.There were things he saw that disturbed him; like a worker who had his own unhygienic way of dealing with over-filled bottles on the production line. “He actually was slugging out of the bottles,” Riley said.
But far more alarming was tampering with ‘best buy’ dates to extend the shelf life of thousands of jars of olive tapenade. Former factory worker Shane Roesler says he did it on the orders of Mogulbay.
“We erased the old text with acetone and reprinted them on the side of the glass with a laser printer that we had set up for the bottled line,” he said.On a recent visit to The Big Olive we bought two of the last boxes of the tapenade that were on discounted sale and showed them to Roesler. Still- visible old dates on jars that Roesler failed to completely wipe out could still be seen.
Roesler claims they could have been as much as three years out of date. Done last year, making the new best by date 2014, breaches the Australia-New Zealand Food Standards Code.
Miller advises you buy brands that have a seal of certification, like the award-winning Cobram Estate from Victoria.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that The Big Olive isn't a member of the Olive Oil Association, and its products do not carry the certification stamp.
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