Your olive oil might be unfit for human consumption

Climate-related shortages are likely to encourage fraud involving adulterated food products such as edible oil and orange juice.

- Lara Williams

You can think of your grocery bill partly as an embodiment of a number of extreme weather events around the world, from sogflation as potato harvests suffered in Europe to tomato prices in the Middle East rising after heatwaves.

Perhaps the most dramatic example has been the eye-watering rise in olive oil prices over the last year, which few middle-class shoppers would have failed to notice. The steep climb can be traced back to severe drought and heatwave conditions in the Mediterranean, likely exacerbated by the climate crisis, as my colleague and Bloomberg Opinion's resident olive oil expert Javier Blas has written.

But it's not the only way the climate crisis might be altering our grocery baskets. Criminals are exploiting liquid gold's price shock, meaning that there may be more of a chance that a bottle of extra virgin is actually lampante, a grade considered unfit for human consumption.

Data released to the Guardian under Freedom of Information laws shows that the European Union saw a record number of potential olive oil fraud cases at the start of 2024 as prices peaked.

The true scale of olive oil-related crime is also likely to be much higher as the data only captures cases reported to the EU Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety and omits domestic cases.

Olive oil fraud takes a few different guises. High-quality extra virgin may be mixed with adulterants to make it go further, or criminals may concoct a blend to transform low-grade or cheap oil into something that might pass as the good stuff.