In November 2023 investigators in the Spanish province of Ciudad Real opened twelve barrels. They held 260 000 litres of oil destined for sale as olive oil and unfit for consumption. Eleven people were arrested, along with the seizure of four vehicles and EUR 91 000 in cash. The case is not an outlier: Europol counts olive oil among the two groups of foods most affected by counterfeiting and false designation in Europe, alongside wines carrying a protected designation of origin.

That sounds further away than it is. Switzerland imports virtually all of its olive oil from the same European market in which these cases play out. What helps on a Swiss shelf is not a hunch but knowing how the faking is done, who checks, and what the checks have actually found.

How olive oil is adulterated

Three methods are documented by investigations, and none of them is exotic.

Blending with lampante oil. Lampante is the lowest grade: high acidity, defective flavour, unpleasant smell. It may not be sold directly to consumers and has to be refined first. Europol describes the mechanism in the Spanish-Italian case: the criminals used lampante oil to dilute their product, and mixing in the lower grade allowed them to offer competitive prices and so to enter legal supply chains. That is the point worth keeping. Adulterated oil does not stand out on a shelf through an absurd price, but through a plausible one.

Other vegetable oils under a false name. The 2024 edition of Operation OPSON includes a case from La Rioja in which a canning company filled its tins with sunflower oil or pomace oil labelled as olive oil, together with tuna of lower quality than the label claimed. Here too the aim was to undercut competitors substantially.

Helping the colour along. In the same investigations, officers searched warehouses and seized 71 tonnes of oily substances in tubs and cans of various sizes, plus 623 litres of chlorophyll used for the adulteration of oils. The colour of an olive oil therefore says nothing about its grade: green can be bought in.

What the investigators found

The figures come from Europol's statements on the OPSON operations, which bring together police, customs and food regulatory agencies from dozens of countries.

CaseFinding
Spain and Italy, November 202311 arrests, 260 000 litres of oil unfit for consumption in 12 barrels, 4 vehicles, EUR 91 000 in cash
Italy, OPSON 2024approximately 42 tonnes of adulterated oil marketed as Italian extra virgin olive oil – in some cases already on the market
Spain, OPSON 20244 arrests, 45 000 litres of oil and about 120 000 cans of tuna
OPSON 2024 overall29 countries, around 22 000 tonnes of food, goods worth over EUR 91 million
OPSON 2025 overall31 countries, around EUR 95 million, 101 arrest warrants, 13 groups disrupted, 31 165 checks and inspections

Two details reward a second look. First, the Italian part of the 2023 case ended not in arrests but in inspections of three oil factories in Sicily and Tuscany, where one company was sanctioned for irregular labelling of its products. In this trade, fraud and sloppy labels live close together. Second, in the 2025 edition Europol names fats and oils explicitly as a focus, with special attention to olive oil – and Switzerland is listed as a participating country in that operation.

Why the price drives the fraud

Europol names the trigger of the 2023 wave directly: a mix of factors such as general price inflation, reduced olive oil production and increasing demand created the perfect breeding ground for fraudulent producers. That is the uncomfortable logic of the subject. When genuine oil becomes expensive, the gap between what a litre ought to cost and what a shelf is asking becomes a business model.

The reverse also holds: easing prices remove part of the incentive, but not the opportunity. How the market has moved lately is set out in Olive oil prices in 2026: why it is getting cheaper.

How the EU runs its checks

The limits sit in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2022/2104, whose Article 13 repealed the older framework – Regulation (EEC) No 2568/91 and Implementing Regulation (EU) No 29/2012. For extra virgin olive oil its Annex I requires a free acidity of no more than 0.80 per cent, a median of defects of exactly 0.0 and a median of the fruity attribute above 0.0. It adds a ceiling of 35 mg/kg for fatty acid ethyl esters, a figure that indicates whether poor fruit was worked.

How the checking happens is governed by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/2105. The main points:

  • A minimum density of checks. Member States must carry out at least one conformity check per year per thousand tonnes of olive oil marketed on their territory (Article 3(2)).
  • Selection by risk, not by chance. Article 3(4) lists among the criteria the price of the oil compared with other vegetable oils, blending and packing operations, storage facilities and conditions, the country of origin and of destination, and the place of the check – for instance the first point of entry into the Union.
  • Escalation. Where checks reveal significant irregularities, Member States must increase the frequency of checks (Article 3(6)).
  • Traceability. Operators from the mill up to the bottling stage must keep entry and withdrawal registers for each category of olive oil they hold (Article 5(1)).
  • A panel, not only a laboratory. Tasting panels approved by the Member States assess the organoleptic characteristics and report on the category. The methods used are those of the International Olive Council.
  • Accountability. By 31 May each year Member States report the results of their checks to the Commission (Article 14).

These numbers deserve an honest reading: one check per thousand tonnes is a sampling density, not a net without holes. It is built to find anomalies, not to test every bottle. What the limits mean one by one is set out in What Is Extra Virgin Olive Oil?.

What Switzerland measures

Switzerland sits outside the EU agricultural market rules but inspects the same bottles – and publishes results.

In an interregional campaign organised by the food control and consumer protection office of the canton of Lucerne and the Cantonal Laboratory of Zurich, 15 cantons took part with 96 samples in total. The outcome was uncomfortably clear: 11 samples, that is 11 per cent, showed sensory deviations that did not justify the designation «extra vergine» or «nativ extra». Five per cent showed chemical differences from the requirements. And 44 samples – 47 per cent – had deficiencies in their labelling.

A second example shows how finely the laboratories now look. The Cantonal Laboratory of Basel-Stadt examined 29 olive oils of «extra vergine» quality, collected from large retailers, organic shops and neighbourhood shops in Basel, originating from Italy (10), Greece (7), Spain (5), Palestine (3) and one sample each from Albania, Portugal, Tunisia and Turkey. Four samples, 14 per cent, had to be objected to – for an incorrect declaration of the fatty acids. In one Tunisian and one Palestinian oil the saturated fat content was wrongly declared; an Italian and a Portuguese oil deviated on monounsaturated fats.

The reason the laboratory determines the fatty acids at all is the interesting part: it uses them not only to check the nutrition table but to verify that the bottle really holds olive oil. Single-variety edible oils have a characteristic, unmistakable fatty acid pattern. That is the analytical lever against the method used in La Rioja.

The legal basis is a simple proposition: under Article 12 of the Foodstuffs and Utility Articles Ordinance and Article 18 of the Foodstuffs Act, every statement on the packaging must correspond to the facts. In Basel the consequences fell on the producers and importers, who had to cover the cost of the analyses and arrange for the declaration to be corrected.

What this means when you buy

  • The category is a legal claim, not advertising. «Extra virgin olive oil» means limits met plus a panel finding no defects. If the label says only «olive oil», refined oil is involved – which is lawful, but a different product.
  • Colour is not a clue. The 623 litres of seized chlorophyll are the argument: green can be bought in.
  • No home remedy replaces the testing. What proves adulteration is the fatty acid pattern in a laboratory and the verdict of a trained panel. Neither has a kitchen equivalent.
  • Report anything odd where the measuring happens. Market control runs through the cantonal laboratories, and they have said they will go on taking samples.
  • Test results are the cheapest information available. How the oils fared in Swiss tests is collected in Olive Oil Tests in Switzerland 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Is the olive oil in a Swiss supermarket adulterated?

In the campaign covering 96 samples from 15 cantons the majority of oils were sound. Eleven per cent were objected to for sensory deviations and 5 per cent for chemical differences; the most common defect, at 47 per cent, was the labelling.

What is lampante oil?

The lowest grade of olive oil, characterised according to Europol by elevated acidity levels, an undesirable flavour and a distinctly unpleasant odour, which make it unsuitable for consumption. It may only reach the market after refining.

Can you detect adulteration at home?

A practised nose can notice defects such as rancidity. Proving that a foreign oil was blended in runs through the fatty acid pattern in a laboratory – which is exactly how the Basel cantonal laboratory found its four objections.

Who carries out the checks in Switzerland?

The cantonal laboratories take samples in the trade and publish results, sometimes in interregional campaigns. The legal basis is that every statement on the packaging must correspond to the facts.

Does a high price protect against fraud?

Not reliably. The documented mechanism is precisely that adulterated oil enters legal supply chains at plausible prices in order to stay competitive.

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