Bring It On: Olive Oil Importers Welcome More Testing by FDA

In its fight to defend the integrity of mass-mar­ket olive oils, a trade group of American importers says it’s ready to go another round.

A recent report by the House Committee on Appropriations for the upcom­ing fed­eral bud­get bill called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to update its 2015 study on the authen­tic­ity of extra vir­gin olive oil sold in the U.S.

The news was received with open arms by the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA), accord­ing to interim exec­u­tive direc­tor Tom Mueller (not the Tom Mueller who wrote the exposés on olive oil frauds).

“We wel­come it,” Mueller told Olive Oil Times. ​“We think this type of rig­or­ous test­ing is impor­tant to ensure the total con­fi­dence of American con­sumers and to move away from some of the sub­jec­tive, false rhetoric we’ve seen around olive oil that isn’t based on inde­pen­dent, sci­en­tific test­ing.”

The pre­vi­ous FDA study, con­ducted in 2015, tested 88 prod­ucts labeled extra vir­gin olive oil. It used the gas chro­matog­ra­phy method adopted by the International Olive Council to deter­mine the com­po­si­tion and con­tent of sterols and triter­pene dial­co­hol. Three sam­ples (3.4 per­cent) did­n’t meet purity cri­te­ria, laid out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, based on desmethyl­s­terol and triter­pene dial­co­hol com­po­si­tions.

That 3.4 per­cent would equate to more than 10,000 tons of olive oil con­sumed in the U.S. each year — or the annual con­sump­tion for around 10 mil­lion Americans — that were ​“pos­si­bly adul­ter­ated with com­mod­ity oil and/or sol­vent-extracted olive oil.” Furthermore, the study tested olive oils labeled extra vir­gin for adul­ter­ation.

In fact, two of the three sam­ples FDA researchers spiked them­selves with 10 per­cent hazel­nut oil went unde­tected for adul­ter­ation.

Still, the NAOOA found rea­son to cheer.

“The FDA’s find­ings are remark­ably con­sis­tent with test­ing we’ve done in inde­pen­dent IOC labs over 25 years, which has found that 98 per­cent of olive oil sold in U.S. retail out­lets is authen­tic and high-qual­ity,” Mueller said.

That might be a stretch. While the FDA study found that most oils tested were unadul­ter­ated, it did not mea­sure for high qual­ity or that the sam­ples met the chem­i­cal and sen­sory stan­dards for the grades indi­cated on their labels.

“Congratulations — most olive oil isn’t cut with bat­tery acid,” said a pro­ducer who sells the oil from his small fam­ily farm online and through farmer’s mar­kets. ​“Testing for adul­ter­ation is one thing — and test­ing for qual­ity is another. Most peo­ple still don’t get extra vir­gin when they pay for extra vir­gin and the FDA test­ing does­n’t address that.”

While the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of mar­keters, pack­agers and importers that make up the NAOOA show bravado — olive oil’s virtue has been reg­u­larly tak­ing shots to the chin for quite some time.

Examples include the arrests of dozens in Italy accused of export­ing fake olive oil to the U.S., an inves­ti­ga­tion into wide­spread mis­la­bel­ing of extra vir­gin olive oil in Brazil, a global oper­a­tion that seized $250 mil­lion in coun­ter­feit and sub­stan­dard food, and a Taiwanese food mag­nate who received a two-year sen­tence as part of an olive oil taint­ing scan­dal — just to name a few that have occurred in the past year alone.

Most endur­ing, of course, was the study by the University of California Davis with researchers in Australia in 2010 that found 69 per­cent of imported and 10 per­cent of California olive oil sam­ples labeled extra vir­gin did not meet IOC and USDA sen­sory stan­dards, and it showed that the chem­i­cal tests failed to con­firm the sen­sory test results in a major­ity of cases.

For its part, the FDA says it is con­cerned about ensur­ing what’s on the label is deemed authen­tic in sim­ple terms, along with pro­tect­ing the pub­lic’s health.

“Economic adul­ter­ation of olive oil reduces con­sumer con­fi­dence in the com­mod­ity and can poten­tially cir­cum­vent proper haz­ard con­trol and assess­ment,” FDA spokesper­son Marianna Naum told Olive Oil Times. ​“There have been numer­ous reports of pos­si­bly adul­ter­ated olive oil. Our objec­tive as out­lined in the (2015) study was to see whether it was pos­si­ble to detect if an extra vir­gin olive oil had been adul­ter­ated with another type of oil.”

A report last year by the House Committee on Appropriations called on the FDA to develop a test­ing sys­tem for all imported olive oils, which sug­gests lob­by­ing efforts to imple­ment a national stan­dard for qual­ity are suc­ceed­ing.

“Olive oil stan­dards cur­rently exist in only four states, and there is no manda­tory fed­eral stan­dard,” Mueller said. ​“A stan­dard of iden­tity would give the FDA, states and the indus­try a clear path to con­sis­tency and authen­tic­ity, encour­age fair deal­ing within the entire mar­ket­place and cre­ate greater pro­tec­tions for con­sumer inter­ests.”

• Authenticity assess­ment of extra vir­gin olive oil


• University of California Davis Olive Center