`Olive Oil Authenticity Testing Underway in UK - Olive Oil Times
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Olive Oil Authenticity Testing Underway in UK

By Isabel Putinja
Apr. 30, 2015 10:22 UTC

A food and drink research firm has been cho­sen by the UK gov­ern­ment to carry out authen­tic­ity test­ing on olive oil imported to the UK.

Following the entry into force in the UK of the EU’s olive oil reg­u­la­tions in February 2014, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), a UK gov­ern­ment agency which sup­ports the farm­ing and food sec­tor, selected Campden BRI after a call for sub­mis­sions to test and ana­lyze all types of olive oils imported into the UK.
See Also:Articles about the Rural Payments Agency (RPA)
Testing will be done at the company’s lab­o­ra­tory approved by the International Olive Oil Council (IOC), located at their head­quar­ters in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. Authenticity test­ing will include con­for­mity checks at olive oil bot­tlers and retail­ers by ana­lyz­ing the lipid com­po­nents of oils to con­firm they are authen­tic and unadul­ter­ated.

In a news release, Julian South, head of chem­istry and bio­chem­istry at Campden BRI said ​“Food authen­tic­ity con­tin­ues to be a high-pro­file issue and we are delighted to be cho­sen by the RPA to help indus­try and gov­ern­ment meet the chal­lenge of beat­ing food fraud. This con­tract reflects our posi­tion as a trusted and respected cen­ter pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal excel­lence to the food and drink indus­try.”

Authenticity test­ing is nec­es­sary to iden­tify cases of fraud where olive oil is adul­ter­ated with infe­rior qual­ity oils or other veg­etable oils.

The EU has pro­posed EU-wide mea­sures to com­bat coun­ter­feit oils under the European Commission’s reg­u­la­tion Regulation N° 2568/91 of July 11, 1991 on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oil and olive-residue oil and on the rel­e­vant meth­ods of analy­sis.

The reg­u­la­tion aims to guar­an­tee the qual­ity and authen­tic­ity of olive oil by list­ing the phys­i­cal, chem­i­cal and organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics to be exam­ined dur­ing test­ing and the meth­ods to be used.

Research on olive oil authen­ti­ca­tion is sup­ported by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 pro­gram.


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