[stiray]

A word of warning.

Personally I am not touching the "homegrown stuff" vegetables from the home growers I don't personally know as: a few years back, it was uncovered (not Croatians only, this was wide spread in Adriatic region) smuggling EU forbidden pesticides from non EU countries into EU and selling them as they did improve harvest a lot. You can imagine this practice is impossible to control effectively and this is a huge issue, but also a huge potential for earnings.

It was also shown, that the home growers have mostly no education about pesticides usage and are using them by "over the thumb" rule, where the levels in vegetables can quickly go over the allowed levels (from before the pesticide was forbidden) and as such can be far more harmful than controlled vegetables from store chains/distributors that have their own laboratories to check for the toxic content - they are responsible and fined for what they distribute.

You can imagine, the nearest countries to Schengen borders were most affected. At that time Croatia wasn't in EU and it was source of pesticides for nearby EU countries, now they are probably coming from Serbia and Bosnia, while homegrown vegetables are not controlled and just sold on markets.

Same goes for homegrown vegetables in Hungary, Slovenia and Italy. If you personally know the seller, go for it, their vegetables are surely better by taste then hydroponically grown in greenhouses, but I wouldn't take risks by random seller.

Now for the "Adriatic islands" (and coastal region overall) vegetables, they have very poor soil, not a lot of it and also the rain is scarce, so any improvements for larger harvest are very welcomed to the locals (that are barely able to supply themself, not million tourists flocking to the country each year) and I would imagine the risk is even higher there.

I don't want to say, that this is a general behavior, but without any effective control, there is just no way to know.

Europol as source, not some tourist influencers or fake news site:

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/hit-...

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/2-04...

[rdtsc]

Absolutely, I know someone, who knows someone doing exactly what you described. EU has been eating a lot of “locally grown” garlic actually grown in China and other similar things.

[stiray]

This is something else (faking country of origin, basically a very common scam) and actually not an issue in regards to toxicity as you cant import the china garlic into EU without checking it for forbidden chemicals. It is not locally grown, but it is not harmful as you couldn't import it in this case.

Similar scam is getting a fish or squid in local Adriatic coast restaurants, where in most cases you are getting frozen fish/squid from Asia. There is barely any restaurant serving local fish (and they will lie about origin and mask the taste with excessive amounts of garlic), as most of local fish harvest is being sold immediately in the morning to fish markets internally, to Zagreb and Ljubljana. Barely any fish stays in coastal region as capital cities users are able to pay much more for it. While you will pay dearly for restaurants that are actually able to get a grasp on fresh local Adriatic fish, you can forget about 20 euros bills, and rather add another 0.

Or "home made" virgin olive oil mixed with olive oil from cheaper countries or even ordinary oil. Most of tourists will never be able to figure it out. Another thing that shouldn't be bought from someone you dont know personally.

The warning I have posted is about poisoning the locally grown and uncontrolled vegetables with forbidden pesticides bought on black market.

Btw, it is a rarely known fact that the cacao was really bad regarding the pesticide content before the EU took a hit on cacao producers and they needed to adapt to be able to sell on EU market. Now the whole world is eating much more healthy chocolate. :)

And it is continuing, no deforestation etc.: https://www.cbi.eu/market-information/cocoa/buyer-requiremen...

[rdtsc]

> actually not an issue in regards to toxicity as you cant import the china garlic

Well, import they did from what I heard. It was more of a smuggling operation than. The key was to smuggle small batches at a time and go through certain crossings where the officials are bribed. Then in EU it was presented as “locally” grown. But I definitely agree, buying produce at a local market you can’t always be sure. Growing stuff is hard and buying cheap stuff is too tempting. So some farmers found a “way”. Some more shady than others.