`Terra Creta Organizes Conference - Olive Oil Times
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Terra Creta Organizes Conference

By Julie Butler
Oct. 4, 2012 09:41 UTC

Visitors from 14 coun­tries — and 50 local farm­ers — have signed up for the 2012 Terra Creta International Conference on olive oil and qual­ity to be held in Chania, Crete, next week.

Terra Creta Marketing Manager Karpadakis Emmanouil told Olive Oil Times the goal of the October 11 – 14 con­fer­ence is to give par­tic­i­pants ​“a total olive oil expe­ri­ence — from the tree to the bot­tle.”

Other key objec­tives are to expand knowl­edge of qual­ity issues, health ben­e­fits and bio­log­i­cal attrib­utes, and pro­vide tips on how best to store and use olive oil.

Terra Creta also hopes to pro­mote the excel­lence and and unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oil in its region — Kolymvari in west­ern Crete — and to edu­cate pro­duc­ers and pro­vide insight into inter­na­tional demand and trends, espe­cially in emerg­ing mar­kets, he said.

Olive oil qual­ity and health ben­e­fits

Among the expert line-up at the con­fer­ence is Prof. Apostolos ( Paul) Kiritsakis from the Greek Observatory of Oxidative Stress in Health and AgriFood, whose pre­sen­ta­tion will be on high qual­ity olive oil as a func­tional food.

Meanwhile, ​“Olive oil, a poten­tial new drug” is the topic of a pre­sen­ta­tion by Prokopios Magiatis from the depart­ment of Pharmacognosy and Natural Products Chemistry at the University of Athens.

International food and wine bro­ker Liz Tagami will give a pre­sen­ta­tion titled ​“Questioning olive oil qual­ity,” Dr. Edwin N. Frankel from the Olive Center at the University of California will address the effect of adul­ter­ation of vir­gin olive oil on its nutri­tional and bio­log­i­cal value, and Dr. Manolis Paschalis of AGENT Laboratories will speak on the threat for olive oil posed by food con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

“Οlive oil, tra­di­tional foods, and health” is the title of a pre­sen­ta­tion to be given by Prof. Antonia Trichopoulou of the WHO Collaborating Centre Medical School, University of Athens, and writer Nikolaos Psilakis’s topic is ​“The mir­a­cle of Cretan nutri­tion.”

International olive oil mar­ket

Apostolos Kalfas from Tropical Brazil will talk on olive oil in the emerg­ing mar­ket of Brazil; Patrick Billoy of Etn. Franz Colruyt will address trends and poten­tial in Belgium; Praful Mehta of the Unity Brands Group will pro­vide insights on ethics and qual­ity in the US Market; and Minoan Imports’ John Gibson will speak about that market’s dynamism and par­tic­u­lar­i­ties.

Yadong Qian from the Jiangsu Tian Yun Food Technology Co. will explain China’s boom­ing mar­ket, and Il Woo Joo of Seil International will cover olive oil in the cos­met­ics area in South Korea.

The olive oil mar­kets in Finland, Germany and Russia, and the inter­na­tional mar­ket for organic prod­ucts, will also be addressed.

Innovation

Among top­ics to be dis­cussed dur­ing inno­va­tion work­shops at the con­fer­ence are brand­ing of a new prod­uct — specif­i­cally the tsounati vari­ety olive — and how the dec­la­ra­tion of acid­ity on the front label of olive oil prod­ucts has affected con­sumer behav­iour.

Other activ­i­ties

Additional activ­i­ties include cook­ing shows by celebrity chef Dimitris Skarmoutsos, one of the fore­most expo­nents of con­tem­po­rary Greek cui­sine; an olive oil tast­ing and com­pe­ti­tion; meals based on the tra­di­tional Cretan diet; a half day tour of the ancient city of Knossos; and fol­low­ing the olive oil pro­duc­tion process from har­vest to extrac­tion for olives from the ancient olive tree of Vouves, said to be about 3500 years old.

English will be the offi­cial lan­guage but simul­ta­ne­ous trans­la­tion will be avail­able in Greek and Russian.

Journalists from seven coun­tries will be cov­er­ing the con­fer­ence, among them a con­trib­u­tor for Olive Oil Times.

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