Controversy in Italy Over New 'Olio di Roma' PGI

After a bruis­ing bat­tle over the estab­lish­ment of the ​‘IGP Olio di Puglia’, the National Olive Growers’ Consortium (CNO) is gear­ing up to oppose yet another appli­ca­tion for a pro­tected geo­graphic indi­ca­tion (IGP) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

This time the show­down is tak­ing place in Lazio, the admin­is­tra­tive region which is home to the country’s cap­i­tal. A pub­lic meet­ing was held at the Temple of Hadrian in Rome last week, at which Unaprol and Op Latium made their case for an IGP Olio di Roma cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and held a pub­lic hear­ing on the mat­ter.

“More than 100 munic­i­pal­i­ties have already sup­ported this ini­tia­tive which rep­re­sents a great oppor­tu­nity, espe­cially for those provinces and ter­ri­to­ries that had no chance of hav­ing a pro­tected name,” David Granieri, the pres­i­dent of Unaprol, said at the event.

Granieri and his sup­port­ers have been lob­by­ing the Ministry of Agriculture for this sta­tus for more than two years, which they argue will ben­e­fit local pro­duc­ers.

“The recog­ni­tion of the denom­i­na­tion is a tool for the ben­e­fit of com­pa­nies that adds value and increases their com­pet­i­tive­ness,” Granieri said.

Once given the ok by the Ministry of Agriculture, the request moves on to the European Union for a final stamp of approval.

However, Fabrizio Pini, the pres­i­dent of Appo Viterbo and vice pres­i­dent of the CNO warned that the move might actu­ally harm pro­duc­ers if it is rushed to the EU too quickly.

“IGP Olio di Roma could rep­re­sent a great oppor­tu­nity for the devel­op­ment of Lazio olive grow­ing,” he said in response to the meet­ing. ​“But as it has been thought it risks becom­ing a boomerang for pro­duc­ers.”

Pini and the CNO believe that blan­ket­ing the entire region of Lazio with one IGP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will eclipse the effects that the already-estab­lished pro­tected des­ig­na­tion of ori­gin (DOP) cer­ti­fi­ca­tions already have there.

DOP cer­ti­fi­ca­tions sig­nify that the qual­ity of a product’s prop­er­ties are deter­mined by its geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion and includes both nat­ural and human fac­tors. An IGP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, on the other hand, indi­cates that at least one part of the process takes place in the des­ig­nated area. The lat­ter tends to cover a broader swath of ter­ri­tory than the for­mer.

This slight dif­fer­ence in def­i­n­i­tion between the two cer­ti­fi­ca­tions has Pini and the CNO con­cerned that a poten­tial IGP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion will devalue the DOP cer­ti­fi­ca­tions already in place in the region.

Pasquale Scivittaro, a spokesman for the CNO, told Olive Oil Times that for these rea­sons the Olio di Roma IGP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is likely to hurt some olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“IGP Olio di Roma now would not be a sym­bol of qual­ity and excel­lence,” he said. ​“There would be no cer­tainty of the ori­gin of the cul­ti­vars used [in any par­tic­u­lar oil] beyond those from Lazio, and the prices would risk a dras­tic reduc­tion.”

Currently, within the admin­is­tra­tive region of Lazio there are four DOP cer­ti­fi­ca­tions: Sabina, Tuscia, Canino and Colline Pontine. However, there are roughly 25,000 acres of olive trees, about half of the region, that are not cov­ered by these four and there­fore do not ben­e­fit from them.

It is these out­ly­ing acres that Granieri and his sup­port­ers believe will be vastly helped by the IGP.

“The goal of the IGP Olio di Roma project is to over­come the exist­ing frag­men­ta­tion and enhance the ori­gin and qual­ity of all regional pro­duc­tions,” Granieri said. ​“An eas­ily rec­og­niz­able brand, which closely links prod­uct and ter­ri­tory, can con­sti­tute a con­crete help for com­pa­nies in the com­pe­ti­tion on the mar­ket.”

Pini and the CNO counter that they are not opposed to the idea of an IGP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the region, but are opposed to the chem­i­cal and pro­duc­tion stan­dards laid out in the appli­ca­tion.

“We are not opposed to IGP Olio di Roma, but we ask for changes because now the pro­ce­dural guide­line has sev­eral neg­a­tive aspects for pro­duc­ers, for the qual­ity of the prod­uct and for con­sumers,” Scivittaro said.

The CNO has a laun­dry list of demands they would like Granieri and Unaprol to adhere to before going any far­ther.

As the appli­ca­tion cur­rently stands, para­me­ters for polyphe­nols, acid­ity and per­ox­ides are lower than those of the DOP cer­ti­fi­ca­tions. The cur­rent guide­lines also call for olives to be har­vested within 48 hours, dou­ble the amount of time allot­ted by the DOP stan­dards.

Perhaps most affron­tive to the CNO was the stip­u­la­tion that only 70 per­cent of the olives for an IGP Olio di Roma-cer­ti­fied bot­tle would need to come from the region, mean­ing the rest could come from any­where else.

“[We pro­posed] an increase of at least 80 per­cent of oil com­ing from cul­ti­vars from Lazio region, the remain­ing 20 per­cent must come from Italian cul­ti­vars and it must be spec­i­fied in the pro­ce­dural guide­line,” Scivittaro said. ​“However, now the pro­ce­dural guide­line states that 70 per­cent of oil must come from Lazio and 30 per­cent of oil from other cul­ti­vars, with­out spec­i­fy­ing the ori­gin.”

“You could use, for exam­ple, Spanish cul­ti­vars and this is not absolutely good,” he added. The CNO wants all of this to be changed or, Scivitarro said, they would for­mally peti­tion both the Ministry of Agriculture and EU to reject the appli­ca­tion.

Neither Granieri nor Unaprol responded to mul­ti­ple requests for an inter­view for this arti­cle. However, there are still two weeks left for them to address the griev­ances of the CNO before the Ministry of Agriculture passes the appli­ca­tion along to the EU.

Some observers of the indus­try are tired of these fights between com­pet­ing spe­cial inter­ests groups. Luigi Caricato is the edi­tor of Olio Officina Magazine and sees these fights as cycli­cal. He believes they will con­tinue to hap­pen and every­one involved will come away with a dis­ap­point­ing result. He pointed to the row over IGP Olio di Puglia as an exam­ple of this.

“Excluding them all and leav­ing the man­age­ment [of these cer­ti­fi­ca­tions] to totally unre­lated fig­ures, leav­ing the respon­si­bil­ity of all deci­sions to an extra­or­di­nary com­mis­sioner and a staff of free and inde­pen­dent experts [could fix the prob­lem],” he wrote in an edi­to­r­ial. ​“But per­haps that is just a dream.”

• Unaprol


• The National Olive Growers’ Consortium


• Olio Officina Magazine