Comments on: IOC Weighs in on Davis Olive Oil Study

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:03:36 +0000

I stand red-faced and corrected on the actual rejection of the additional German government and Australian industry tests, and apologize: that statement was very closely below the section I quoted, and I certainly should have seen it. I would be interested to have third-party oil chemists mediate this dispute and/or improve on the methodology or harmonize implementation, as in principle these are very useful tests.

The remainder of my critique of the IOC response, and of the article summary of their response, stands.

By: Editor

Editor — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 19:36:43 +0000

In response to your comment, First, the article asserts that the IOC said that “The methods used in the study (DGF and Australian standards) were found to be unreliable by the IOC.” The IOC said no such thing.

See the IOC statement that reads: DGF and Australian standards …were in fact presented to the IOC but were rejected after scrutiny because they were not reliable. This lack of reliability is the reason for their failure to be included in either the IOC trade standard or EU regulations, or consequently in the Codex Alimentarius standard.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:41:15 +0000

I think that this article greatly exaggerates the IOC’s critique of the Davis study. First, the article asserts that the IOC said that “The methods used in the study (DGF and Australian standards) were found to be unreliable by the IOC.” The IOC said no such thing. It said only that these methods “are not official chemical methods cited in international olive oil-specific food or trade standards” and that the IOC has not yet performed its own tests to validate their reproducibility and repeatability. The IOC statement goes on to note that “they have however been adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).” And, of course, they have also been adopted by the German government and the Australian olive oil industry; even adding the “international” qualifier here is thus somewhat disingenuous. And indeed, the 1,2-diacylglycerol and pyropheophytin tests were adopted in large part because it allows chemists to detect degradation and contamination that the IOC standards fail to catch.

Again, the article says that the IOC asserted that “A correlation drawn between UV absorbance and sensory analysis in some of the samples lacked support”. Again, the IOC statement does not say this. It says only that “it would be necessary to ascertain the method used for testing and to corroborate the results obtained.” Ie, the IOC doesn’t know how the Davis group performed the testing and hasn’t corroborated it, not that it was unsupported.

Finally, it’s worth noting that even if “only” 1 in 10 olive oils fails to meet the minimum standards set by the IOC, that’s a pretty miserable track record, especially since many (including the German government, Australian industry, and many industry experts) would say are too weak to begin with. And the IOC doesn’t do random testing directly from supermarket shelves as the Davis study does, so their 10% is certainly a lowball estimate of what consumers are actually getting. Plus, they don’t name names of failed samples, unlike the Davis study, so this information is of little use to consumers.

There is extensive international documentation of defective and fraudulent olive oil; the IOC needs to stop being defensive of mediocrity and pull the industry up to a higher standard.