`Made in Italy Claim "Used Like an ATM" - Olive Oil Times
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Made in Italy Claim "Used Like an ATM"

By Olive Oil Times Staff
Jun. 11, 2010 10:10 UTC

“Identity theft dou­bles the world­wide mar­ket for com­pa­nies that sell extra vir­gin olive fraud­u­lently claim­ing to be ​‘Made in Italy’ and who use the lever of ori­gin as an ATM.”

The com­plaint by Massimo Gargano, chair­man of the Italian olive oil con­sor­tium Unaprol, came at a par­lia­men­tary hear­ing of the Senate Agriculture Committee called by President sen. Paolo Scarpa Bonazza Buora to exam­ine the prob­lems of the olive oil mar­ket.

International con­sump­tion is increas­ing and the pur­chas­ing deci­sions are increas­ingly mov­ing towards high-qual­ity prod­ucts includ­ing extra vir­gin, DOP and organic olive oils, but this pos­i­tive trend does not explain the fall in the price of qual­ity Italian olive oils, which reached its low­est lev­els of eleven years. ​“This sit­u­a­tion is not caused by excess pro­duc­tion”, Gargano said, because ​“the bad weather the last two years have reduced the sup­ply of olive oil world­wide. ”

Recent Italian food indus­try data shows a strong 57% increase in turnover. The study was pre­pared from the analy­sis of finan­cial infor­ma­tion relat­ing to a sam­ple of 109 cor­po­ra­tions with sales exceed­ing one mil­lion euros oper­at­ing in the sec­tor.

“There emerges a pic­ture in con­trast to the gen­eral con­text” Gargano said — who pointed out that increases in rev­enue have not brought wealth to the com­pa­nies that actu­ally pro­duce and sell only qual­ity extra vir­gin IOO% made in Italy. ​“In almost all cases, the oper­at­ing prof­its and pos­i­tive growth trends con­cerned com­pa­nies out­side of the agri­cul­tural sec­tors that have stolen wealth from cer­ti­fied Italian agri­cul­ture by imper­son­at­ing Italian extra vir­gin olive oil with prod­ucts that were in fact pro­duced with other mix­tures.”

In a dossier pre­pared for the par­lia­men­tary hear­ing, Unaprol called for more con­trols to ensure food safety and com­pli­ance with the rules of the mar­ket, fur­ther ini­tia­tives for the bal­ance of power along the sup­ply chain (espe­cially in respect to retail), and more resources for com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the con­sumer.

In par­tic­u­lar, Unaprol seeks a new for­mula based on pay­ments made directly to farm­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in trace­able sup­ply chains. ​“These mea­sures,” said Gargano ​“should be designed to achieve the European objec­tives in terms of regional devel­op­ment and agri­cul­tural mar­ket because you can not con­tinue to fund with the money of for­eign pro­duc­ers sub­ject to the world of pro­duc­tion agri­cul­ture.”

The stated objec­tives are to main­tain the European model of agri­cul­ture in the con­text of pre­serv­ing bio­di­ver­sity and the agri­cul­tural land­scape, food qual­ity at fair prices for con­sumers, keep­ing peo­ple on the land by enhanc­ing and diver­si­fy­ing pro­duc­tion in rural areas, effi­ciency and com­pet­i­tive­ness of the indus­try, main­tain­ing a safety net for pro­duc­ers, reduc­tion of pol­lu­tion and pro­duc­tion of renew­able energy to address cli­mate change:

.

Emergency mea­sures for the olive sec­tor ​“MADE IN ITALY” — Unaprol

The fol­low­ing are actions which are con­sid­ered nec­es­sary to begin to sup­port the Italian olive oil sys­tem, using the exist­ing pro­gram tools, includ­ing the national olive plan, the plan­ning of rural devel­op­ment, agri­cul­tural research, pro­mo­tion and sup­ply chain con­tracts:

  • Initiate promptly the sec­ond tranche of fund­ing had been allo­cated to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paign on tele­vi­sion made in Italy for olive oil. The first tele­vi­sion series has con­tributed to a major shift in con­sump­tion towards prod­ucts made in Italy;
  • Recognition f high qual­ity Italian extra vir­gin olive oil by the Ministry, includ­ing the spec­i­fi­ca­tion of the qual­ity of food and agri­cul­tural prod­ucts based on the pos­ses­sion of the fol­low­ing: domes­tic ori­gin, sen­sory and ana­lyt­i­cal para­me­ters that are more restric­tive than the con­ven­tional prod­uct;
  • Guidelines for the use of an olive plan to refo­cus the pri­or­i­ties of the RDP on the aspect of com­pet­i­tive­ness and envi­ron­men­tal impact by ensur­ing sup­port for those imple­ment­ing new pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties (new vine­yard), mod­ern­iza­tion of the net­work of mills, includ­ing reuse of prod­ucts (veg­e­ta­tion water and pomace);
  • Review of exist­ing leg­is­la­tion on water re-use of veg­e­ta­tion and vir­gin pomace improved so that they can be con­sid­ered as spe­cial waste;
  • Consequent strength­en­ing of research, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and trans­fer of new tech­nolo­gies through new calls for research and those of Mipaaf MIUR and the imme­di­ate reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the CRA oils;
  • Completion of the exist­ing leg­is­la­tion con­cern­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the oil at out­lets (bars, restau­rants, cater­ing);
  • Completion of the Community rules on the proper nutri­tion in schools (Regg. 1913/06 – 697/09) through the con­sump­tion of fruit and veg­eta­bles in schools with the use of olive oil made in Italy for sea­son­ing the pro­vided veg­eta­bles;
  • Providing clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the leg­is­la­tion calls for pub­lic can­teens (schools, hos­pi­tals, etc.). The exclu­sive use of the prod­ucts made in Italy with regard to the pri­or­i­ties of extra oil, DOP, organic and trace­able made in Italy.

Contracts for sup­ply chain

  • Enlargement of the areas cov­ered by the con­tracts of chain extend­ing the legal basis of the Ministerial Decree 1 August 2003 Art. 1 para­graph 2 °;
  • Opening of a new con­tract pro­vid­ing a sup­ply chain between actions eli­gi­ble for fund­ing, even the pur­chase of phys­i­cal assets to be reac­quired in the hands of Italian brands sold to for­eign com­pa­nies or the repo­si­tion­ing and relaunch of Italian brands;
  • Initiation of a tech­ni­cal study of man­age­ment pro­ce­dures and con­trols in rela­tion to indi­vid­u­als under the new leg­is­la­tion referred to Reg (EC) 182/09.

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