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.
00:32L'olio d'oliva is the food that is the most subject to adulteration and fraud in all kinds of food.
00:42It's easy to mix it with small oil, with seeds, with other compounds that change the quality.
00:52Such fraud may impact consumer health and it's done for easy profit.
00:57The 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 in their mission to beat fraud.
01:22Her 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, more confidence with our consumers.
01:40Many producers do marketing with photos of millennial trees, but at the end it's not the oil of these trees.
01:50And we, to make us credible, have this certification.
01:55Because it's a certainty that we give to our consumers.
02:06Such 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.
02:22Greek biotech experts Stelios Ahondakis and Savir Tsikoraki 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 the 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.
03:05The 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.
03:17And be sure that you have something that is solid.
03:20It is a path that we are now investigating, hopefully to be able to launch this product within the next months, year.
03:32Producers, 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.
04:03Following the DNA tests, the food detectives are taking traceability one step further by giving each bottle a digital passport too.
04:13All data that is collected during the production of olive oil production are provided in the blockchain,
04:21but are made accessible to the consumer, which can easily access the Aquair Code through the whole history of olive oil,
04:31from the field where the olive oil has been produced, up to the number of the bottle bought.
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, fish, dairy, honey and wine.
04:54See you soon.
04:55See you soon
04:59See you soon.
05:03part
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