Anna Cane Named President of Italian Interprofessional Group

Anna Cane has been named the new pres­i­dent of the Filiera Olivicolo Olearia Italiana (FOOI), the Italian inter­pro­fes­sional olive asso­ci­a­tion.

Cane, also the pres­i­dent of the olive oil group at the Italian Association of the Edible Oil Industry (Assitol), pre­vi­ously served as FOOI’s vice pres­i­dent. She suc­ceeds Paolo Mariani, pres­i­dent of the olive millers asso­ci­a­tion, Assofrantoi.

Tommaso Loiodice, pres­i­dent of Unaprol, the national olive oil pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, was named FOOI vice-pres­i­dent. FOOI’s direc­tor Giulio Martino has been con­firmed in his posi­tion.

“Our thanks go to those who pre­ceded us for start­ing a path of col­lab­o­ra­tion and dia­logue among all play­ers in the sup­ply chain, which is now bear­ing fruit,” Anna Cane said.

“Together with Tommaso Loiodice, we intend to con­tinue along this path, increas­ing coop­er­a­tion between agri­cul­ture and indus­try,” she added.

In a press note, FOOI said the entire Italian olive sec­tor has par­tic­i­pated in the inter­pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion since 2016 through olive grower, miller, olive oil pro­ducer and table olive pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tions.

“Since then, we learned to work together, which was far from obvi­ous,” Cane said. ​“Today, we know how to coop­er­ate because every link in the chain has taken a step for­ward in acknowl­edg­ing the chal­lenges faced by the oth­ers.”

FOOI added that the inter­pro­fes­sional con­tributed to the progress made in how the sec­tor is approach­ing sci­en­tific research in prob­lems such as olive oil sterols or min­eral oils in olive oil.

“This inclu­sive approach has allowed us to leave the door open to all those in the olive sec­tor who have not yet taken into con­sid­er­a­tion the ben­e­fi­cial results obtained,” Cane said, encour­ag­ing all olive mar­ket par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing large retail­ers, to take a step for­ward.

In its note, the FOOI said the orga­ni­za­tion’s main goals remain to add value to the national olive oil pro­duc­tion while work­ing on the eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity of the whole sec­tor.

FOOI also noted coop­er­a­tion with the European Union and the International Olive Council. Its press note also cited the ongo­ing dia­logue with the Italian national government’s deputy sec­re­tary to Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests, Patrizio La Pietra.

“We are ready to relaunch the dia­logue with the min­istry to build a project capa­ble of putting together all voices in the olive oil world,” the FOOI note con­cluded.