Economy
California Throws Down New Regulations on Olive Oil Purity
By proving its product is the real deal, the state hopes to gain ground in the European-dominated market.
"Extra Virgin Suicide" was one the New York Times' better headlines this past year—and if you were an importer of olive oil, a fairly inflammatory one. The story stacked up the many tiers of fraud regularly committed by European olive oil makers: Marking bottles as "Italian" when the oil was actually Spanish, Moroccan, or Tunisian; stamping "extra-virgin" on substandard product; and cutting olive oil with soybean and seed oils.
Still, European imports supplied virtually all of the 293,000 metric tons of olive oil consumed in the U.S. last year, as the L.A. Times reports.