There was an exposé of oregano food fraud awhile back (did anyone hear about it? It passed me by...) in UK, and Australia did its own testing and found they had a problem too.[www.choice.com.au]

Thank you for that. I wonder about other herbs. I have an oregano plant in my garden inherited from a previous owner, sounds as though I should take better care of it.

Is there any proof that this has come to NZ?

Raewyn G

As I understand it there is a huge amount of food fraud going on all over the world. Some of it is harmless, like the substitution of olive leaves for oregano, some of it is harmful, like the use of soy bean or cottonseed oil as adulterants of olive oil.

I struck a local food fraud a few months ago when I bought from a stall at Thames Market a big plastic pot of "Pohutukawa" honey. I'd bought it there before and the honey was perfect - white, fragrant and slightly salty the way pohutukawa honey should be. The contents of this pot were tan coloured, coarse grained with little aroma and it tastes like an uninteresting multi-floral. Obviously it's not harmful, but a terrible disappointment and I hate to think that the image of NZ honey is being tarnished by this kind of fraud.