Italian farm groups defends wheat pricing and tackle olive‑oil fraud

Confcooperative president Raffaele Drei told Radio Studio90 that accusations against the cooperative’s role in the National Hard‑Wheat Single Commission (CUN) are unfounded. He said the CUN’s price quotations cannot significantly influence the free wheat market, which is driven by global supply‑demand dynamics, and reaffirmed the cooperative’s intent to continue participating responsibly.

Coldiretti and Unaprol announced their intention to join civil proceedings following a two‑year anti‑fraud operation in Salento that seized 327,000 litres of illicit olive oil. They described the seizure as only a “drop in the ocean” of a €5.8 billion market plagued by large‑scale imports falsely labeled as Italian. The groups called for systemic, technical controls – such as nuclear magnetic resonance and isotopic mapping – to guarantee authentic origin and curb price‑undercutting by traffickers.