Is your olive oil real or fake? How the Food Detectives can fight fraud using DNA tests
Europe’s top food safety experts are joining forces to crack down on fraud. Euronews follows them in our special series The Food Detectives. In Episode 6, we meet the team fighting counterfeit olive oil with a portable DNA testing kit in Italy.
In partnership with the European Union & the Watson Project
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/11/17/is-your-olive-oil-real-or-fake-how-the-food-detectives-can-fight-fraud-using-dna-tests
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00:01Europe's best food safety experts are joining forces to crack down on fraud.
00:06Euronews is following them in this special series called The Food Detectives.
00:10In this episode, we're following the team fighting counterfeit olive oil in Italy.
00:23Every drop of olive oil has its own story.
00:27But sometimes, what looks like the real deal is in fact counterfeit.
00:53Such fraud may impact consumer health,
00:55and it's done for easy profit.
00:58The price of oil can vary from little to a very high value.
01:02So there's a big fork inside which we can verify fraud.
01:06This is aggravated by the fact that the value of oil is extremely fractured.
01:12So, olive oil maker Antonella Meyer-Mashvili is working with the food detectives from the EU's Watson project and their mission to beat fraud.
01:23Her secret weapon is genetic code.
01:25She uses DNA tests to guarantee the identity of her oils.
01:29We've chosen to analyze our oils in DNA to create more transparency and confidence in our consumers.
01:40Many producers do marketing with photos of millenaries.
01:47But at the end, it's not about oil in these trees.
01:50And we, to make us credible, have this certification.
01:54Because it's a certainty that we give to our consumers.
02:00Such genetic testing is still very rare among olive oil producers as it takes time and money.
02:13Until today, it's only been done in research labs.
02:16But the food detectives are now bringing the lab directly to the mill.
02:20Release our DNA.
02:21Greek biotech experts Stelios Arhandakis and Sophia Tsikaraki are developing a solution to make DNA testing more accessible and easier to carry out.
02:32We just opened the door for the first time in the world to do a DNA testing of an olive oil outside of a lab.
02:41We are introducing a device called Field DNA.
02:45This device allows to isolate DNA from an olive oil sample in field conditions.
02:54So that's it. We are ready to analyze our DNA.
03:00The food detectives' portable DNA kit still needs refining, but it's on the right track.
03:06The development of a technology is always a challenge because you need to validate, you need to test it, you need to optimize until you reach a good performance.
03:18And be sure that you have something that is solid.
03:21It is a path that we are under now, we're investigating.
03:25Hopefully to be able to launch this product within the next month, year.
03:30Producers, millers and packages across Umbria welcome the innovation.
03:37It's the base, it's what can help us companies, us olive oil farmers, to protect the territory and the product that we do.
03:49To have an analysis that guarantees that that product comes from that plant is the most beautiful thing we can do.
03:56Watson's project gives us clarity and the final consumer is asking and looking for it more.
04:04Following the DNA tests, the food detectives are taking traceability one step further by giving each bottle a digital passport too.
04:12All the data that has been collected during the production chain of olive oil,
04:19are guaranteed within the blockchain, but are made accessible to the consumer,
04:25which can easily access through AquaRecode to the entire history of olive oil,
04:31from the field where olive oil are being produced,
04:35to the number of the bottle that has been acquired.
04:38That's it for this episode of The Food Detectives.
04:45Please head over to our website for more reports on beating fraud and boosting traceability in meat,
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