Berkeley Man Finds Fishy Olive Oil on Local Market Shelf

It just didn't taste like olive oil. I'm not much of a gourmet, but I like to think I know the difference between olive oil and soybean oil. My suspicions were aroused immediately upon sampling the oil I purchased from a local discount grocery store in mid-November 2013. I know what soybean oil tastes like, and I don't like it very much. Apparently not many other diners do either; soybean oil is priced very much lower than olive oil. That would explain the motivation for a crooked producer to substitute the former for the latter. You won't find Chez Panisse putting soy oil on your salad. Yes, this stuff was bargain-priced as olive oil, but way more expensive than this volume of soybean oil would be if honestly marketed.

After poking around on the web, I located a number of food analysis labs that were willing to perform the tests necessary to establish the oil's ancestry...for a fee. I picked a lab that seemed to offer the best prospect of reputable authority - the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Olive Center. (http://anlab.ucdavis.edu/olives)
It took several weeks to ship a sample to the lab and receive notification of the results. When the report came back, sure enough, a Fatty Acids Profile and a Sterols Composition Analysis revealed that "From the test result, this oil is either all soybean or mostly soybean mixed with a little of olive oil[sic]."

 The bottle's label gives 'Cold Pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil' from "Italy, Spain, Greece, Tunisia" as the only ingredient. It also claims to be "packed in Italy."I don't know how much soybean oil is produced, or packed, in Italy.

The offending oil was sold in a two-liter plastic bottle marketed under the brand "Seville". The label listed the address of Seville Imports LLC in Federal Way, Washington. The website SevilleImports.com mentions that olive oil is one of its active commodities. It lists several company locations around the continental U.S., but does not mention a Washington state address. A web search using the term "Seville Imports LLC Federal Way Washington" yielded two results, both in online business directories, that mentioned an organization by this name at an address in Federal Way. A mapping website that features images of streetside structures yielded only a picture of a nondescript warehouse with no identification markings at the address listed. It's not clear whether the ersatz oil was purveyed by the "real" Seville Imports, or by another entity calling itself by the same name, or just by some anonymous criminals pretending to be the real Seville Imports.

I telephoned the Customer Service Manager of Seville Imports at the number listed on the company website. She seemed genuinely concerned about the matter and promised to have a company representative call me back to discuss the matter, but as of January 31, 2014, no one had called. I also sent a message to the grocery store corporate headquarters through its website on 20 December 2013, but have received no reply as of 31 January 2014.

What legal recourse is available here? To begin with, the oil has already disappeared from the store shelves. This store specializes in odd lots and distressed merchandise.  From hints and remarks I heard while I was shopping around for a lab, most governmental consumer protection agencies don't have the resources to be bothered with something as minor as this. And where would the investigation begin? We don't even know who the originators of this stuff really were...the real Seville Imports may have never known it existed. And commodities like this pass through so many middlemen that a number of them would have had the opportunity to mislabel it.

What about requesting a refund of the purchase price for his Virgin Soybean Oil? I'd rather the store reimbursed me for the expenditure on lab analysis fees, which amounted to hundreds of dollars. Yeah, I know it was kind of silly to blow that much money on a windmill-tilting expedition. The perpetrators, whoever they are, really made me angry with this bogus maneuver. I wanted to be armed with airtight evidence in case I ever got the chance to nail them. But I don't suppose that will ever happen.