From now on producers of Italian extra-virgin olive oil and virgin olive oil will have to indicate on their labels where the olives were picked and pressed in order to ensure the oil's authenticity and quality.
The consumer group Codacons has welcomed the new regulations but observed that this alone was not enough to combat fraud.
''It's a step forward to help protect consumers but it is not enough,'' Codacons said in a statement on Thursday.
The group said it was also necessary for labels to indicate acidity levels and nutritional benefits of the oil.
What was needed now, Codacons added, was ''a norm which prohibits the use of chemical methods to reduce acidity levels and make poor quality oil edible''. The new law was the result of an initiative by the Coldiretti farmers' union against oils which were being marketed as Italian but were produced using olives and oils from other Mediterranean countries including Spain, Greece and Tunisia.
Under the new regulation, all extra-virgin and virgin olive oils must list the origin of all the olives used and their percentage in the final product.
Violation of the new norms will carry fines of up to 9,500 euros.
Until now, Coldiretti observed, ''almost half of the 'Italian' oil sold in the country was made from olives of unknown origin. In order to protect the consumer, Coldiretti worked to make it easier to recognise 'real' Italian extra-virgin oil by reading the label,'' the union said.
''The obligation to indicate the oil's origin on the label also protects the territorial identity of a product like olive oil, a key element in the Mediterranean diet, the demand for which declined in the first nine months of 2007,'' Coldiretti said.
Recent studies, in fact, have shown a 1.2% drop in the consumption of extra-virgin olive oil in Italy compared to the first nine months of 2006.
There are an estimated 250 million olive trees in Italy which in the last harvest produced half a million metric tons of oil making Italy the second-biggest producer after Spain.
This despite a 15% drop in production since 2005. Extra-virgin olive oil is made from the first pressing of the olives and must contain an acidity of no more than 0.8%.
Virgin olive oil is also a first press but its acidity can be as high as 2%.
Neither can have any refined oils blended in.
There are 38 registered brands of extra-virgin olive oils which carry the European Union recognitions of protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographic indication (PGI) on their labels.
The extra-virgin and virgin olive oil sector has an annual turnover of some two billion euros.
