'Veronica Foods' Lawsuit Dismissed

A law­suit against Veronica Foods, the major American dis­trib­u­tor for olive oil shops and tast­ing bars, has been dis­missed.

Yesterday, the defen­dants’ motions to dis­miss the com­plaint were granted after the court found that ​“stand­ing had not been estab­lished,” and the case was closed.

The trade group of major American importers of olive oil, the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA), filed the law­suit against the California-based, spe­cialty store dis­trib­u­tor Veronica Foods and some of its New York-area retail­ers for what it called ​“false, mis­lead­ing and sci­en­tif­i­cally unsub­stan­ti­ated state­ments about olive oil sold in super­mar­kets, claim­ing it lacks the health ben­e­fits con­sumers expect.”

Veronica Foods sup­plies olive oils to hun­dreds of spe­cialty retails shops through­out the U.S. where oils are dis­played in stain­less con­tain­ers, called fusti. Customers are invited to taste oils before they make a pur­chase, and oils are sold in bot­tles bear­ing the shop’s pri­vate label.

Joseph R. Profaci, the newly-appointed exec­u­tive direc­tor of the NAOOA told Olive Oil Times today, ​“Sure, we’re dis­ap­pointed with the court’s deci­sion, which was not based on the under­ly­ing mer­its of our case but on a tech­ni­cal­ity. We dis­agree with the con­clu­sion that the NAOOA does not have stand­ing to sue on behalf of its mem­bers, and we are con­sid­er­ing all of our options.”

“We stand by the alle­ga­tions of the com­plaint,” Profaci added. ​“While we have noth­ing against Veronica Foods and other com­pa­nies that mar­ket oils through spe­cialty shops, we object to mar­ket­ing prac­tices that we believe are mis­lead­ing to con­sumers, and cause con­sumers to believe that the health ben­e­fits of olive oil are only avail­able in oils sold through such spe­cialty out­lets.”

Veronica Foods and the retail­ers it sup­plies mar­ket their oils as being ​‘Ultra Premium,’ ​“which it touts as the high­est stan­dard in the indus­try,” accord­ing to the NAOOA com­plaint that cited the Veronica Foods web­site.

The NAOOA com­plained that the Veronica Foods’ use of its Ultra Premium mark and seal was a ​“self-cre­ated des­ig­na­tion used exclu­sively by the com­pany and its retail­ers to sell Veronica Foods olive oils. Thus, the use of the UP des­ig­na­tion itself is false and mis­lead­ing in that con­sumers are led to believe that the olive oil was cer­ti­fied, spon­sored or approved by a third party.”

The NAOOA also took issue with claims made on the web­site of a Veronica-sup­plied retailer: ​“Defendant D’Avolio, a retailer of VFC’s olive oil, has par­tic­u­larly tar­geted brands sold in super­mar­kets, where NAOOA mem­bers’ brands are pri­mar­ily sold. In pro­mot­ing its own UP cer­ti­fied olive oils (pur­chased from VFC), D’Avolio dis­torts find­ings of an alleged indus­try report to rep­re­sent to con­sumers that var­i­ous brands sold in super­mar­kets hold no health ben­e­fits.”

Veronica Foods did not imme­di­ately respond to a request for com­ment, but ear­lier said: ” We stand by the truth and accu­racy of all of the state­ments we have made related to olive oil and our related prod­ucts.”

“We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing con­sumers with the high­est qual­ity prod­ucts avail­able and rely on state of the art sci­en­tific research and inde­pen­dent lab test­ing,” the com­pany wrote in an email to Olive Oil Times in response to the law­suit last December. ​“Our sources include pub­lished U.C. Davis research, test­ing and research by Modern Olives Laboratory, a world-lead­ing olive oil test­ing com­pany, and lead­ing experts such as Christian Gertz and Thomas Mueller.”

“The NAOOA is a trade orga­ni­za­tion that rep­re­sents some of the largest national and inter­na­tional olive oil sell­ers in the coun­try. We believe the NAOOA has filed this law­suit against Veronica Foods in an attempt to inter­fere with our efforts to improve the qual­ity of olive oil and accu­racy of olive oil label­ing,” said Veronica Foods in its writ­ten response.

Earlier this year, a Georgia court dis­missed another NAOOA law­suit against the tele­vi­sion per­son­al­ity Dr. Mehmet Oz that chal­lenged what the NAOOA called ​“false attacks” that sin­gled out imported olive oils, and for claim­ing dur­ing a show that 80 per­cent of the extra vir­gin olive oil sold in U. S. super­mar­kets isn’t ​“real.”