So, if olive oil from Portugal is imported to Italy and bottled and mislabelled as from Italy, this makes it automatically lower quality? This is the kind of virtue signalling bullshit that I reject on HN.

It sounds like you're trying to be angry. I don't see any virtue signaling here except some "holier than thou" from the tone in your comment.

Nobody is claiming that a label magically changes the quality. The comments above are claiming that olive oil from some regions fetch a higher price in the market, ostensibly for good reasons, and that taking something else and claiming it is from that region is fraud. I'm surprised that feels controversial.

    > ostensibly for good reasons

Can you name some of these reasons?

I have no expertise in regional honey or olive oil or any of the other often-counterfeited things but I assume it is something like wine where the region implies terroir, relevant policies/regulations, and long histories of expertise/techniques. For example, I have heard honey is majorly impacted by the regional flowers around where it is produced.

I personally wouldn't know Italian olive oil from Greek from rancid American garbage but if people think they do and they are trying to buy something in particular then ideally they aren't mislead about that.

If something like this is done it’s done to save cost, which almost always correlates with quality.