Pomace Is Not Olive Oil. The Entire Industry Knows This. The Company Knows This.

Walk into a grocery store in New York City and you will find large tins of Capatriti olive oil with pictures of olive branches on the label. The front reads “100% Pure Olive Oil” or “Extra Virgin Olive Oil the honest olive oil” in big, confident letters. The price is $35.99 for a 68-ounce tin. It looks premium. It is priced like premium. It is, according to lab results attached as exhibits to a federal class action complaint, not olive oil.

What it contains is olive pomace oil. Pomace is what gets left over after the real olive oil is pressed out: the skins, pits, and pulp. To extract the residual fat from pomace, manufacturers use chemical solvents and high temperatures. The refining process required to make crude pomace safe for human consumption strips it of virtually all flavor, aroma, and color. The result is a pale, odorless, nearly tasteless industrial fat that sells for $0.16 per fluid ounce. Capatriti charges $0.53 per fluid ounce.

No regulatory body anywhere in the world permits pomace to be labeled or sold as “olive oil.” This is not a technicality. The USDA, the New York State Legislature, and the International Olive Council (IOC) all define olive oil as a product obtained solely from the fruit of the olive tree using mechanical or physical means, with no additives of any kind. New York Agriculture and Markets Law Section 204-a defines “olive-pomace oil” as a separate and distinct category. Selling pomace as olive oil is illegal under New York state law. Failing to meet those standards, the statute says plainly, renders the product “misbranded.”

The complaint makes clear that this cannot happen by accident. Any standard quality control check would detect the presence of pomace. A company that packs and distributes olive oil does not unknowingly ship adulterated product under a pure-olive-oil label. The complaint states this directly: “Defendant’s misbranding is intentional.” The Gourmet Factory, Inc. has its principal place of business at 55 Corporate Drive, Hauppauge, New York, 11788.

The Laboratory Numbers Are Impossible to Explain Away

The North American Olive Oil Association commissioned a third-party purchaser to buy Capatriti “100% Pure Olive Oil” off grocery store shelves in New York in early 2025. The sealed sample was shipped to the Lluís Jané Busquets Laboratori d’Anàlisi S.L., an IOC-recognized laboratory located in Sant Quirze del Vallès, Spain. This is not a random testing outfit. The IOC certifies a small number of labs worldwide specifically for olive oil quality and authenticity testing. The results were attached as Exhibit A to the federal complaint.

100% Pure Product: Lab Report No. 79655

Wax content above the IOC threshold is a direct chemical indicator of pomace adulteration. Wax is found in the skin of the olive fruit. It enters the oil only when the skin has been processed using the high-heat solvent extraction method that defines pomace production. An elevated wax reading at 3,984 mg/kg versus a legal ceiling of 350 mg/kg is not a borderline result. It is definitive. Erythrodiol and uvaol are compounds also released only during pomace extraction. At 21.8% against a limit of 4.5%, the sample tested nearly five times over the maximum permitted level.

Plaintiff Maria Gabriela Arauzo purchased the Extra Virgin Product from a Key Foods Supermarket in Manhattan in December 2025. That tin was shipped to the same Spanish laboratory in January 2026. The results were attached as Exhibit B.

Extra Virgin Product: Lab Report No. 86106

Stigmasta-3,5-diene is a compound that forms specifically because of the high temperatures applied during the refining process required to make crude pomace edible. Its presence above the IOC limit is, according to the scientific literature cited in the complaint, a direct marker of pomace contamination. The complaint quotes peer-reviewed food chemistry research confirming that stigmasta-3,5-diene arises from the same high-heat industrial process that defines pomace oil production. These results, the complaint states, “simply could not have occurred if this lot of ostensibly ‘100% Pure Olive Oil’ contained only oils extracted from olives exclusively through mechanical methods.”

The Taste Was Wrong. They Weren’t Imagining It.

Juan Martinez lives in the Bronx. In September 2025, he walked into a Compare Fresh supermarket and picked up a 68-ounce tin of Capatriti “100% Pure Olive Oil” for around $35. He had bought olive oil before. He knew what it was supposed to taste and smell like. When he opened the Capatriti tin and used it, something was off. The oil was flavorless. It was odorless. It looked different from every other olive oil he had purchased.

He threw the container away before he finished it. He had to go out and buy a new, more expensive bottle of real olive oil to replace it. The money was gone. The time was gone. And the trust he placed in a label that said “100% Pure” in large block letters was gone with it.

Maria Gabriela Arauzo made the same discovery in Manhattan. In December 2025, she paid the same $35 for a Capatriti tin at a Key Foods Supermarket. The label promised “Extra Virgin Olive Oil the honest olive oil.” Extra virgin is the highest grade of olive oil. It is produced through cold pressing with no heat, no solvents, no chemical treatment. It is supposed to have a distinctive, grassy, fruity flavor. What she got was flavorless. It looked different from the real thing. She knew something was wrong before she ever saw a lab report.

This is what pomace does. The industrial refining process that transforms olive waste into a sellable product also destroys flavor and aroma entirely. Pomace oil is described in the complaint as “nearly flavorless due to the heavy refining process required to produce it.” Consumers who noticed something wrong were right. Their senses were detecting what a laboratory in Spain later quantified with gas chromatography.

These two consumers are now the named plaintiffs in a class action covering tens of thousands of people across the United States. Every one of those people paid a price premium for a product sold as premium olive oil. Every one of them got an industrial fat instead. Many of them probably still don’t know. They cooked with it, fed it to their families, and moved on. Some switched brands without understanding why. The injury is invisible unless you know what to look for, which is exactly how food fraud works at scale.

Olive oil is not a luxury product for most of the people who buy it in New York bodegas, supermarkets, and grocery chains. It is a staple. People buy it because they believe it is healthier than heavily processed alternatives. They are right: virgin olive oil is minimally processed, lower in trans fats, and nutritionally distinct from pomace, which is extracted at high heat using chemical solvents and contains a different fat profile. When a company substitutes an industrial byproduct for the real thing and charges the same price, it is not just committing fraud. It is breaking a fundamental promise people make when they choose to feed themselves and their families a specific way.

The Company’s Own President Said It Under Oath. In 2013.

This is the detail that separates this case from garden-variety food fraud. The Gourmet Factory has been here before. In 2013, the North American Olive Oil Association sued the company’s predecessor entity, Kangadis Food, Inc., over the same Capatriti brand. In that case, the company’s president, Themis Kangadis, submitted a sworn affidavit in opposition to a preliminary injunction. What he said in that affidavit is extraordinary.

The president of the company swore in federal court that Capatriti contained zero olive oil. The product was 100% pomace. He submitted this in writing, under oath, to a judge in the Southern District of New York.

That case produced a ruling in 2014 from Judge Jed Rakoff. The 2026 complaint cites that ruling directly:

Judge Rakoff’s ruling means that as of 2014, The Gourmet Factory operated with a federal court having told them, on the record, that pomace cannot be sold as olive oil. The 2026 complaint states the consequence plainly: “Defendant is fully aware that a product containing any amount of pomace cannot be sold as pure olive oil.”

The 2026 complaint also notes that the company sells a third product explicitly labeled as a canola-olive blend: “Capatriti Blended Canola Oil And Extra Virgin Olive Oil.” The existence of this clearly-labeled blended product makes the mislabeling of the pure-olive-oil products harder to explain as ignorance or oversight. They know what a disclosure looks like. They chose not to make one.

The complaint was filed on March 27, 2026. Plaintiffs sent a pre-suit notice letter to the defendant on February 13, 2026 as required by New York UCC § 2-607(3)(a). The case is captioned Martinez and Arauzo v. The Gourmet Factory, Inc., Case No. 1:26-cv-02528, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. It was brought by attorneys at Bursor & Fisher, P.A. and Eaton & Torrenzano, L.L.P.

What Food Fraud at Scale Actually Does to People and Markets

Environmental Degradation

Pomace oil production is chemically intensive. The extraction of residual fat from olive pomace requires industrial chemical solvents, typically hexane, and high-temperature processing that legitimate olive oil production explicitly prohibits. This industrial process generates chemical waste streams at a scale that cold-pressed mechanical olive oil extraction does not. When food fraud allows a cheaper, more chemically intensive product to substitute for a less chemically intensive one at scale, it shifts market demand toward the dirtier production method without consumers knowing or consenting. Consumers who buy Capatriti believing they are supporting minimally processed food production are, according to the lab results, funding the opposite.

Public Health

The complaint specifically identifies the health dimension of this fraud: “Olive oil is well-known to be one of the healthiest cooking oils and is extremely popular in the United States due in substantial part because of it is minimally processed, especially virgin olive oils, and therefore substantially lower in trans fats than pomace olive oils that are extracted at high heat with chemical solvents.” The distinction matters because people make dietary choices based on those health properties. A shopper with cardiovascular concerns who switches to olive oil based on its documented health profile is not getting those benefits when the product they buy is actually a high-heat, solvent-extracted industrial fat. The mislabeling does not just steal money. It reroutes health decisions based on a false premise. People who believe they are reducing their intake of heavily processed fats are consuming exactly those fats instead.

Economic Inequality

The price comparison in the complaint tells the story with numbers. Pomace oil costs $0.16 per fluid ounce. The Capatriti products charge $0.53 per fluid ounce. Real competitor olive oils range from $0.53 to $0.89 per fluid ounce. The fraud works precisely because Capatriti prices itself at the low end of the premium olive oil range, making it accessible to budget-conscious shoppers in grocery stores that serve working-class and immigrant communities in the Bronx and lower Manhattan. The people most likely to buy the cheaper olive oil option are the people least likely to be able to afford the financial loss when that product turns out to be fake. Compare Fresh in the Bronx. Key Foods in Manhattan. These are neighborhood grocers serving communities where $35 is a significant purchase. The class action is not an abstract legal exercise. It is tens of thousands of people who were cheated at the grocery store.

What the Numbers Mean in Human Terms

What You Can Do Right Now

The class action is active. If you purchased Capatriti “100% Pure Olive Oil” or Capatriti “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” anywhere in the United States, you may be a class member. Class membership is determined by whether you purchased the product during the statute of limitations period, not by whether your specific tin was tested.

If you still have the product: Photograph the label, front and back, including any lot numbers and best-by dates. Store the container. This documentation may be relevant to your status as a class member and useful to plaintiffs’ counsel.

If you want to verify your oil: The North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA) and the International Olive Council (IOC) maintain resources on identifying authentic olive oil. The NAOOA funded the testing that led to this lawsuit. You can reach their quality assurance programs at naooa.org.

If you want to act collectively: Share this story with neighbors, community members, and social networks. The stores selling this product are grocery stores in working-class neighborhoods. The people most harmed are often the least connected to class action information. Print it. Text it. Tell people at the bodega. Class actions only work when the class knows it exists.

Plaintiff’s counsel: Bursor & Fisher, P.A., 1330 Avenue of the Americas, 32nd Floor, New York, NY 10019. Tel: (646) 837-7150. Attorneys Yitzchak Kopel and Julian C. Diamond are listed counsel. Eaton & Torrenzano, L.L.P., Craig A. Eaton, 8416 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, New York 11209. Tel: (718) 332-7766.