Small Sampling in Sweden Spurs Debate on Tasting Panels

In a small, two-year sur­vey, the Swedish Food Agency found that 17 of 21 bot­tles labeled extra vir­gin olive oil did not meet the stan­dard for the grade.

The oils that failed were either vir­gin grade or lam­pante. None of the tested oils was found to be blended with another type of oil alto­gether.

“Extra vir­gin is a qual­ity label that many pay extra for,” Aron Lindén, the state inspec­tor at the Swedish Food Agency, said. ​“It is dis­turb­ing that only a few of the oils we exam­ined meet the require­ments.”

The selected oils were taken from retail estab­lish­ments and ana­lyzed using chem­i­cal and organolep­tic tests.

All 17 of the olive oils that failed did so in the organolep­tic eval­u­a­tion, which was con­ducted by a European Commission-approved panel that is also rec­og­nized by the International Olive Council.

The test­ing was under­taken as part of con­for­mity checks that are man­dated by the European Union to ensure that prod­uct label­ing is com­pli­ant with legal require­ments.

The fact that only 21 brands were tested over a two-year period — sam­ples the agency already sus­pected for one rea­son or another — sug­gests scant enforce­ment of inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized olive oil stan­dards in Sweden, like every­where else. In 2018, Sweden’s olive oil imports amounted to 42 mil­lion Swedish Krona ($43.8 mil­lion), accord­ing to the mar­ket data provider, Statista.

“The sam­pling was focused on prod­ucts where the Swedish Food Agency sus­pected a major risk for non-con­for­mi­ties, in this case in olive oils of the cat­e­gory ​‘extra vir­gin’ sold at the retail level,” Erica Fiume, a food inspec­tor for the city of Stockholm, told Olive Oil Times.

Fiume said the agen­cy’s focus on high-risk items likely con­tributed to a high fail rate that should not be con­sid­ered rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the broader sit­u­a­tion in Sweden.

“To get a rep­re­sen­ta­tive fig­ure of the over­all con­for­mity of extra vir­gin oils in Sweden, we believe a greater num­ber of sam­ples would be nec­es­sary,” she said.

Fiume added that the Swedish Food Agency did not estab­lish whether the prod­ucts had been inten­tion­ally mis­la­beled or the qual­ity of the oil had degraded over time.

According to the agency, all of the com­pa­nies which had olive oils fail the test­ing were noti­fied and have since taken steps to ensure bet­ter label­ing accu­racy.

Punitive mea­sures – includ­ing pro­hi­bi­tions on putting the oils in ques­tion back on the mar­ket – were taken against some of the com­pa­nies. However, the agency did not spec­ify which com­pa­nies were being pun­ished.

Two of the oils that failed belong to a Swedish com­pany, Di Luca & Di Luca, that imports Mediterranean foods. Its Zeta Classico and Original brands turned out to be lam­pante and have been taken off the mar­ket, accord­ing to the com­pany and the Swedish Food Agency.

Christian Di Luca, the CEO of the com­pany, crit­i­cized the results of the agency’s test­ing. He said sep­a­rate tast­ing pan­els had found the two oils in ques­tion met all of the stan­dards for extra vir­gin olive oil.

“One of our oils in the test has been judged by 10 dif­fer­ent taste pan­els to have all three [chem­i­cal, phys­i­cal and organolep­tic] qual­i­ties,” he said.

However, Fiume stood by the results of the Swedish Food Agency and said only the data from the European Commission-approved panel could be used in deter­min­ing whether the oils qual­i­fied as extra vir­gin or not. ​“The result is objec­tive, accu­rate and legally cer­tain,” she said.

Helene Rehnberg, the pur­chas­ing man­ager at Di Luca & Di Luca, also crit­i­cized the Swedish Food Agency and repeated an argu­ment pre­vi­ously made by an audit­ing firm when it ana­lyzed the use of tast­ing pan­els in deter­min­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tions in Spain.

“We want the Swedish Food Agency to crit­i­cally review the results of the organolep­tic method of analy­sis and that the leg­is­la­tion be taken up for review in the E.U.,” she said. ​“As it now appears, the assess­ment of fra­grance and taste weighs just as heav­ily as the chem­i­cal analy­sis when assess­ing the qual­ity of olive oil and the results are incon­sis­tent, cre­at­ing major prob­lems for the entire indus­try and unnec­es­sar­ily wor­ry­ing the con­sumer.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers found there was a 30 per­cent vari­abil­ity in the qual­i­fi­ca­tions of extra vir­gin olive oils among tast­ing pan­els it reviewed.

“It is evi­dent that the organolep­tic tests cur­rently estab­lished within the area of vir­gin and extra vir­gin olive oil rep­re­sent an inap­pro­pri­ate qual­ity con­trol mech­a­nism that vio­lates the most ele­men­tal prin­ci­ples of the Spanish legal sys­tem, and gravely harms the pub­lic and the olive oil indus­try, fre­quently gen­er­at­ing legal uncer­tainty and inse­cu­rity which, ulti­mately, dis­credit the sec­tor and cause seri­ous finan­cial harm to the indus­try,” the audi­tors wrote in their report.

Fiume dis­agreed and said the sys­tem in place was designed to pro­tect con­sumers and is doing its job suc­cess­fully.

“Official con­trol in the E.U. focuses on con­sumer pro­tec­tion and mar­ket fair­ness,” she said. ​“We could estab­lish non-com­pli­ances where the olive oil in the bot­tles was not con­sis­tent with the declared cat­e­gory on the label. The con­sumers did not get what they paid for.”

• Swedish Food Agency


• Di Luca & Di Luca