`Uruguay Moves to Join Olive Council - Olive Oil Times

Uruguay Moves to Join Olive Council

By Julie Butler
Jul. 17, 2012 14:08 UTC

At least 35 mil­lion euros ($43m) was spent world­wide on pro­mot­ing olive oil in 2010, accord­ing to the International Olive Council.

The fig­ure, which includes both pub­licly and pri­vately funded cam­paigns across 33 coun­tries, was cal­cu­lated as part of the IOC-com­mis­sioned who’s who in the pro­mo­tion of olive oil world-wide sur­vey. IOC mem­ber coun­tries were briefed on the pre­lim­i­nary results of the sur­vey — the first of its kind in the sec­tor — dur­ing IOC meet­ings held July 2 – 6 in Argentina. More results of the sur­vey will be released in October, the IOC said.

Representatives of the gov­ern­ments of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay par­tic­i­pated in the meet­ings in Buenos Aires as observers and expressed inter­ested in IOC activ­i­ties,” with Uruguay for­mally start­ing the process of join­ing the IOC and Chile express­ing par­tic­u­larly strong inter­est, the IOC said in a press release in Spanish.

It said there was also debate among mem­ber coun­tries on the pos­si­bil­ity of IOC-funded mar­ket research in Indonesia and Singapore, Switzerland, and India. Briefings were given on pro­mo­tion cam­paigns car­ried out in the United States and Canada, and oth­ers pro­grammed to take place in Brazil, China and Japan in 2012/2013.

Among other pro­pos­als dis­cussed were a price obser­va­tory project and the cre­ation of a work­ing group charged with issu­ing mar­ket fore­casts. The aim of the lat­ter would be the detec­tion of mar­ket dis­tur­bances and mon­i­tor­ing of fac­tors includ­ing pro­duc­tion, con­sump­tion, changes in con­sumer behav­ior, and pric­ing.

Various (other) ini­tia­tives were dis­cussed, includ­ing the devel­op­ment of a strate­gic plan based on infor­ma­tion sub­mit­ted by the (IOC mem­ber) coun­tries, detailed knowl­edge of the state and per­for­mance of the olive sec­tor in mem­ber coun­tries, and the prepa­ra­tion of a study on the elas­tic­ity of demand based on data bases span­ning 15 – 20 years of fig­ures on con­sump­tion and prices per cat­e­gory, per capita incomes, and con­sumer price indexes. This work is designed to help develop mar­ket reg­u­la­tion poli­cies” the IOC also said.

In the area of chem­istry and stan­dard­iza­tion, atten­dees were briefed on the com­ple­tion of stud­ies on the com­po­si­tion of the oils with abnor­mal para­me­ters (part of prepa­ra­tion for next year’s Codex Committee on Fats and Oils meet­ing), and other IOC work includ­ing on vari­etal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, the organolep­tic assess­ment of table olives, and label­ing.

At a meet­ing of the IOC’s tech­ni­cal com­mit­tee, reports were given on research activ­i­ties includ­ing the inter­na­tional germplasm col­lec­tion project, the use of mol­e­c­u­lar mark­ers, and a car­bon foot­print project.

Separately, atten­dees were also briefed on reforms of cus­toms codes for olive oil and olive pomace to be pro­posed to the World Customs Organisation to har­mo­nize inter­na­tional trade, gather more pre­cise data, improve mar­ket trans­parency, pre­vent fraud and pro­tect prod­uct qual­ity.

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