Fruit that pretended to be imported from Greece was actually imported from Egypt. These fruit were sold in many supermarkets in Romania, including hypermarkets.
Some had been treated with chemicals, past the legal limits for Romania and for Europe. The motive, however, seems to be to get around import taxes.
The fruit also seems to have broken the rules in the country of origin.
The Story above, in Romanian, on Observerator news.
Apparently, 20 tons of oranges were sold illegally. This story is from eight days ago, so I would normally say any fruit that is still around for eight days is probably contaminated. We see that organic fruit goes bad much quicker than that.
According to law, the story says, “the importer is obliged to refuse the import if it does not conform with European standard. And to look after the health of the consumer.”
Anyway, the news report warns us against eating the fruit. My question is, are more contaminated foods being snuck past customs with false labels? Perhaps most of the food being snuck past customs is not contaminated, but one wonders if there is enough control at the borders. What else is entering the country unnoticed?
The good news is, Egypt has enough food to export some of it to us. And not just the stuff that is properly labelled, either.