Jane Reasland

English 102

02/07/2016

Sam Hackworth 

Olive oil is one of the main and most important exports the country of Italy has. It is almost synonymous with the words "liquid gold." It is one of the most exported agricultural products that Italy has to offer, and the issue at hand is that the Italian mafia has had an intense hold on the business for years and they have been altering the validity of the olive oil being produced. My question is, why does the mafia feel entitled enough to not only take over the olive oil industry from small family-run businesses, but also how are they able to sell counterfeit/altered products to countries such as America without having suffered any sort of repercussions? When/will the small business owners who run centuries old olive oil farms revolt and take back control of their businesses and end this reign of fallacy, and what will they do to end the millions of dollars going straight to the mafia's pocket?

I am interested in this research question because I have lived in Italy for eight years of my life and my family still lives there. I have been immersed in that country's culture for as long as I can remember and olive oil has been included in almost all my meals. Food is such a huge part of any kind of culture all over the world, but especially in Italy where every single meal is prepared with pride and authenticity. To know that the mafia is taking something as timeless and historic as olive oil and making it nothing more than a cheap way to make money off of nothing more than tinted sunflower oil and calling it authentic Italian is not only illegal, but its morally wrong and against my values. My personal experience regarding the fake mafia run olive oil is that since now I live in the United States of America, 1 in 3 bottles of olive oil sold in stores are unauthentic and I am gambling on spending my hard earned money on something that is not even real. Nobody wants to spend money on anything that claims to be real but in the end is actually nothing more than a lie. I am qualified to write about this because I have tasted and actually have made my own olive oil with my family, so I know exactly what real true olive oil tastes like and to know that the mafia is taking over hard working family run businesses who are making authentic olive oil just to make money for themselves off of sunflower oil. 

The first source's central claim discusses how its just been recently discovered that Italy has been shipping out fake olive oil and they dedicated an entire 60 Minutes segment to this topic. The major evidence includes Sergio Tirro having a research team of 60 professional olive oil taste testers trying the different brands of olive oil being sold in America and they found that 1 in 3 bottles were unauthentic. The mafia is taking millions of consumer's dollars with no regrets or moral objections and the consumers have no idea that they are being sold fake olive oil because most of them have never had the opportunity to try authentic olive oil. Bill Whitaker is the author of this piece and he has little to no bias in regards to this topic because if he decides to have a bias then he loses some of credibility and he is not allotted that because he is a major news correspondent and if he gives the public anything other than facts he thereby loses some of his credibility. 

The second source mainly talks about the mafia's control in other agricultural businesses such as the wine industry, which also happens to be another key aspect in Italian culture. The evidence is the 80,000 liters of wine that was dumped purposefully because the mafia did not agree with the owners of the Brunello di Montalcino wine business. The values are that the mafia wrongly took a major source of money and power from the rightful owners all because they were being stopped from altering the authenticity of the wine. The credibility of the author and the source is not as strong as is the first source's because it is an article on a news blog website and the author is not well known and does not have as much credibility in the world of journalism. There is no bias because it is still just based off of factual information and there were actual accounts by the owner of the Brunello di Montalcino winery. 

The third source's major claim discusses how the mafia has also tainted the mozzarella cheese business by using cow's milk instead of buffalo milk and it mainly gives factual statistics and numbers as to how much of the farmland in Italy is controlled by the mafia. The major stake for the article is to inform the public of how much of the foods imported from Italy have been influenced and altered by the mafia and their devious acts. The author is also not as well known by the general public, but the source is very well known and it is a famous magazine known as Forbes and it has no bias because, again, like all my other sources it uses nothing but numbers and actual quotes from high ranking officials and people who have been directly affected by this crisis. 

This research question is arguable because many can claim that the money gained from the mafia through these illegal activities is being circulated back into the economy and society because the mafia controls every aspect of the economy. Also, there have yet to be any legitimate arrests or consequences enacted on any mafia member regarding any agricultural topic, thus concluding that there hasn't been enough proof found. The main agreement found consistently in all my sources were that the mafia has a definite hand in dealing out fake products and getting profit from them while destroying small authentic family-run businesses in the process. There really are no disagreements found in the sources because all of them basically discuss the same problem regarding different products and situations. The different perspectives of the sources affect my own perspective in a positive way because it has furthered my knowledge regarding the mafia's involvement in the agriculture business and how much other countries are being taken advantage of when they buy these fake products. I will need to revise my research question by making it more specific in regards to how the small business owners are being affected, and by making more broad in the sense of including different parts of the agriculture businesses and how each one is affected by the mafia's involvement.  
