`Olive Council Examines ‘Legality’ of Flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oils - Olive Oil Times

Olive Council Examines ‘Legality’ of Flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oils

By Julie Butler
Feb. 11, 2014 07:41 UTC

The pop­u­lar­ity and bur­geon­ing range of extra vir­gin olive oils fla­vored with plant extracts such as gar­lic, lemon, thyme and rose­mary poses a big dilemma for the olive oil sec­tor — should these olive oils really be labeled extra vir­gin?

As the International Olive Council (IOC) has itself put it, How can vir­gin olive oil be con­sid­ered extra’ when the sub­stances added to it make it impos­si­ble for organolep­tic analy­sis to con­firm that it really is extra grade?”

The IOC announced today that it thus seek­ing input from stake­hold­ers in the olive oil indus­try about this del­i­cate issue” with a view to resolv­ing the uncer­tainty.

It said that lately the IOC Executive Secretariat had been asked sev­eral times about prod­ucts labelled as flavoured extra vir­gin olive oils’ con­tain­ing plant extracts such as gar­lic, lemon, thyme or rose­mary. It was an issue fre­quently dis­cussed with IOC exec­u­tive direc­tor Jean-Louis Barjol dur­ing his trip to the United States in January. His itin­er­ary included a visit to the Fancy Food Show in San Francisco, at which there were many such oils.

The IOC is keen to make sure that con­sumers are given ver­i­fi­able infor­ma­tion and that busi­ness oper­a­tors know where they stand legally. It there­fore wishes to engage in a dis­cus­sion on whether to draft an explana­tory paper on these prod­ucts to which the IOC trade stan­dard is not applic­a­ble,” it said.

The IOC Executive Secretariat has asked del­e­gates in its mem­ber coun­tries and IOC experts and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the IOC Advisory Committee on Olive Oil and Table Olives to pro­vide their feed­back by March 7.

Stakeholders in non-IOC Member coun­tries are also wel­come to con­tact the IOC Executive Secretariat by this date in order to share their views.


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