`European Partnership to Certify Olive Oil Traceability - Olive Oil Times
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enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

European Partnership to Certify Olive Oil Traceability

By Marco Marino
Nov. 17, 2014 12:00 UTC
Gennaro Sicolo, President of the Italian Association of Olive Growers (CNO)

On October 23rd in Athens, a meet­ing between Gennaro Sicolo, pres­i­dent of the Italian Association of Olive Growers (CNO), and the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of three grow­ers coop­er­a­tives from Crete, Greece was orga­nized.

The aim of the meet­ing was tak­ing stock of the Program of Activities for the Traceability of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (PATO), a CNO project financed by the EU, which aims to cer­tify the EVOO sup­ply chains, in accor­dance with the UNI EN ISO 22005:08 reg­u­la­tion, based on shared tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions.
See Also:UNI EN ISO 22005:8
The reg­u­la­tion defines the trace­abil­ity of foods in order to guar­an­tee prod­uct qual­ity and safety.

CNO launched PATO three years ago to cre­ate at least thirty cer­ti­fied sup­ply chains in Italy, by involv­ing all the stake­hold­ers of the olive oil sec­tor from farm­ers to pack­ers, and using tech­ni­cal and ana­lytic para­me­ters to fos­ter higher stan­dards of qual­ity.

The Greek coop­er­a­tives have joined the pro­gram to be more appeal­ing in inter­na­tional mar­kets where con­sumers are increas­ingly con­cerned with prod­uct trace­abil­ity.

Last year, the Greek coop­er­a­tives were invited to Italy to assess some cer­ti­fied sup­ply chains. They vis­ited an olive pack­ing plant and a Tuscan man­u­fac­turer of cos­met­ics based on extra vir­gin olive oil.

“This project,” Mr. Sicolo said, ​“is an inter­est­ing exam­ple of coop­er­a­tion and mutual trust between pro­duc­ers from two dif­fer­ent coun­tries that have always been rec­og­nized as lead­ers in pro­duc­ing high qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil. This part­ner­ship also has an impor­tant social rel­e­vance, result­ing in the increased effi­ciency of sup­ply chains in terms of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and food safety, and pro­vid­ing a com­mon her­itage which every­one should be informed about.”

Another goal of PATO con­cerns com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

“A good com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy will con­tinue to char­ac­ter­ize our part­ner­ship,” Sicolo added. ​“A sin­gle com­mu­ni­ca­tion for­mat based on qual­ity and cer­ti­fied trace­abil­ity is a great tool to attract con­sumers and put them in direct con­tact with pro­duc­ers, while increas­ing their knowl­edge and aware­ness.

Dubai, Hong Kong and New York are some of the places CNO has cho­sen to present the project.

In early 2015, the PATO project will be pre­sented in Athens to Italian, Greek and European insti­tu­tions.

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