`Greeks Respond to Calls for New Tests for Olive Oil Quality - Olive Oil Times
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Greeks Respond to Calls for New Tests for Olive Oil Quality

By Anna Milionis
Sep. 30, 2013 11:04 UTC
Summary Summary

New World pro­duc­ers are chal­leng­ing the International Olive Council stan­dard and propos­ing new test­ing meth­ods, with experts like Aris Kefalogiannis sup­port­ing stricter eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria for extra vir­gin olive oil. Efi Christopoulou and Panagiotis Konstantinou empha­size the impor­tance of improv­ing qual­ity stan­dards and care­ful eval­u­a­tion to pro­tect the integrity of olive oil in the mar­ket, while con­sid­er­ing regional dif­fer­ences and con­duct­ing national research.

Aris Kefalogiannis
Aris Kefalogiannis

In the U.S. International Trade Commission, report, and else­where, New World pro­duc­ers are chal­leng­ing the effec­tive­ness of the exist­ing the International Olive Council stan­dard, and sup­port­ing the adop­tion of new test­ing meth­ods such as pyropheo­phytins (PPPs) and 1,2‑diacylglycerol (DAGs). Olive Oil Times asked three promi­nent experts whether or not Greece would want to sup­port such mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the inter­na­tional stan­dard.

Aris Kefalogiannis, CEO of Gaea Products SA

We wel­come the idea of higher qual­ity stan­dards and stricter eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria for the cat­e­gory of extra vir­gin olive oil. Eighty-two per cent of Greek olive oil pro­duc­tion is extra vir­gin and within this per­cent­age the major­ity would still qual­ify as such even if we applied stricter cri­te­ria. We believe that a new stricter stan­dard should be the result of care­ful eval­u­a­tion and could include these test­ing meth­ods or other new meth­ods. We believe that stan­dards like the ones pro­posed by the Extra Virgin Alliance could safe­guard both the qual­ity of the prod­uct and the con­sumer.

Efi Christopoulou, European Commission and International Olive Council chem­i­cal and sen­sory test­ing expert

The IOC Trade Standard has spec­i­fied qual­ity and purity cri­te­ria in order to improve the qual­ity of olive oil and to pro­tect it from adul­ter­ation with other veg­etable oils. Since its ini­tial adop­tion, it has been sub­jected to a num­ber of mod­i­fi­ca­tions, based on the new demands of the mar­ket and new devel­op­ments in the sci­en­tific sec­tor. The groups of expert chemists who work on this sec­tor and the results of their research are included in or mod­ify the International Standards. As far as I am con­cerned, any tight­en­ing of qual­ity cri­te­ria in the IOC Trade Standard aims to improve the qual­ity of olive oils on the mar­ket and pro­motes all high qual­ity olive oils from any olive oil pro­duc­ing coun­try they come.

Panagiotis Konstantinou, Director of OLITECN, International Olive Council rec­og­nized chem­i­cal test­ing lab­o­ra­tory

Reducing the lim­its of EC 2568/91 in order to ensure qual­ity would work only if cer­tain con­di­tions are met. We have to choose very care­fully which para­me­ters and which lim­its will be mod­i­fied and any mod­i­fi­ca­tion should not con­demn olive oils, which due to regional dif­fer­ences, may exhibit higher val­ues. For exam­ple, olive oils from the west­ern part of Messinia and the island of Zakynthos tend to have nat­u­rally occur­ring lev­els of ery­thro­diol and uvaol higher than the IOC lim­its. Extensive national research needs to be con­ducted on the char­ac­ter­is­tics of Greek olive oil in order to know which chem­i­cal para­me­ters and to which level we, as a coun­try, can agree to be mod­i­fied so that high qual­ity olive oils are not dis­qual­i­fied. But most impor­tantly for me, it is the enforce­ment of the cur­rent reg­u­la­tion which mat­ters but which unfor­tu­nately is not always the case.

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