`Course Offers Olive Oil Quality Assurance Answers for Buyers - Olive Oil Times
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Course Offers Olive Oil Quality Assurance Answers for Buyers

By Nancy Flagg
May. 14, 2014 06:51 UTC

Help is on the way for buy­ers who want to be able to judge the qual­ity of olive oil they pur­chase. The International Olive Oil School, the UC Davis Olive Center and Leandro Ravetti will be offer­ing an Olive Oil Quality Assurance course to show retail­ers, restau­rants, importers and dis­trib­u­tors what they need to know to assure olive oil qual­ity.

The course is intended to demys­tify olive oil and help buy­ers pro­tect them­selves from olive oil fraud. By tak­ing the class, atten­dees will be able to ​“find their way through the sea of olive oil,” promised Dan Flynn, Director of the UC Davis Olive Center.

The five-les­son course will be web-based allow­ing par­tic­i­pants from across the globe to par­tic­i­pate with­out leav­ing their home or place of busi­ness. It will be taught by Leandro Ravetti from Australia’s Boundary Bend and Dan Flynn, Dr. Selena Wang and Sue Langstaff from the UC Davis Olive Center.

Buyers will learn how olive oil qual­ity starts in the orchard and how it is affected at every stage of pro­cess­ing before reach­ing the con­sumer. State-of-the-art prac­tices for assur­ing olive oil qual­ity will be fea­tured, includ­ing the impor­tance of fresh­ness in eval­u­at­ing qual­ity. ​“Freshness is a handy way to take com­plex infor­ma­tion and boil it down to a sim­ple con­cept,” said Flynn.

Olive oil tast­ing, led by chem­i­cal and sen­sory spe­cial­ists, will give par­tic­i­pants the oppor­tu­nity to sam­ple assorted oils and learn to iden­tify qual­ity dif­fer­ences. Samples, tast­ing glasses and course mate­ri­als will be sent to par­tic­i­pants in advance of the class.

Other top­ics cov­ered in the course will answer ques­tions such as:

- how to boost olive oil sales
 — why the olive oil mar­ket is like the wine mar­ket
 — how organic and con­ven­tional grow­ing meth­ods olives dif­fer
 — how pol­i­tics and insti­tu­tional fac­tors drive oil grades and stan­dards
 — what con­sumers know about olive oil and what affects their buy­ing deci­sions

The five, 90-minute lessons will be broad­cast live begin­ning June 16 from California and Australia. Participants will also be able to access the entire recorded course after­wards.

Participants who suc­cess­fully com­plete this advanced les­son series will receive an Advanced Course Certificate of Completion from the International Olive Oil School.

Space for the Olive Oil Quality Assurance course is lim­ited. Register online on the International Olive Oil School web­site.

More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles