NO, NO, NO!!! Olive oil fraud has NOT spiked in Europe this year.

It sounds as an alarm but there should be nothing more than a kind of summer bashing for those not interested in the Olympics games (or anything else).

If the number of cross-border EU notifications for olive oil in the EU Alert and Cooperation System has spiked for the first months of 2024 compared to the figures of 2018, nothing points out to an increase of food fraud events or at least nothing points to an abnormal increased pattern.

Fact 1: the notifications in the EU Alert and Cooperation System (ACN) represent notifications from individual EU Member States issued for technical assistance and cooperation. They are per se notifications including a cross border element. National’ events are not reported in the ACN. Drawing any conclusion based on an incomplete set of data would be hazardous.

Fact 2: the EU ACN has three components. One is the RASFF (Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed). RASFF notifications are cross-border non-compliances that potentially bear a risk for health (and in a few cases are potentially intentional). Second is the AA. AA notifications are non-compliances that do not present a risk. Finally, FF notifications are non-compliances that might originate from an intentional behavior to deceive customers. FF notifications are agri-food fraud suspicions exchanged between EU Member States that are yet to be investigated and thus to be confirmed as frauds.

Fact 3: the EU ACN has evolved over the years. It is reported that the number of notifications reported in 2024 is three-fold the number of 2018 and thus that frauds are on the increase. It is ignoring that before 2018, there was no other notification system than the RASFF system. Non-compliances and fraud suspicions of cross-border nature were not reported and centralized. The ACN in its actual format took shape in November 2017 and the number of notifications has since progressively increased. In 2023, there were 758 FF notifications reported in the ACN compared to 234 in 2018. Does that mean that fraud in the EU is on the increase, or does it mean that the ACN is taking shape over the years with EU Member States’ authorities taking use of it?

Fact 4: twelve FF suspicions have been reported for the first 4 months of the year 2024, so forty-eight at the end of the year following that trend? We had twenty-three in 2023. That is a worrying trend. But we had forty-six notifications in 2020. So, what is the reference point to be used? What if a third of the fifty AA notifications originates from an olive oil non-producing country that only started reporting these cases in 2024 in the ACN system? Does that count as a surge of frauds?

Fact 5: can we conclude about the prevalence of a phenomenon without knowing the conditions that led to these number? How many controls? (hundreds per year). Are they aleatory controls or targeted controls focusing on those products that are the most suspicious ones per their presentation, place of selling?

Fact 6: olive oil production has faced EU extremely poor harvest these past two years (1.500 000 tons in 2023 compared to the average of 1.861.000 tons for the last ten years) and prices have spiked as consequence by at least twice. This means that incentives for indelicate operators to commit fraud have increased (there is more money to make). But it does not mean that opportunities to commit frauds have followed the same path. EU Member States (and informed operators) are taking those risks factors into account and may have increased their vigilance and adapt their control frequency accordingly.

Fact 7: olive oil is a product that naturally evolves (degrades) over time depending on its aging, maturation, and storage conditions (temperature, temperature variations, exposure to light…). It is therefore not unlogic that an oil initially (and say rightly) qualified as EVOO degrades overtime to VOO and to the very extreme to lampante non-edible oil. Many non-compliances point to that reality. To the contrary, oil substitution such as adulterating olive oil with sunflower oil are with no doubt clear cut frauds.

Take away: NO, NO, NO!!! Olive oil fraud has NOT spiked in Europe this year. There is no solid data (yet) supporting that allegation. The unseen data might be the silent storyteller.

This is exactly a counter intuitive insight as already documented by Abraham Wald in its 1940’s theorization of the survivor ship bias. One (relayed by many) is reaching conclusions from biased and from unseen data. And the saga grows as a sensational information.

Time to go back to the Olympics...

(edited for typos)

#EUFFN #foodfraud #oliveoil