`Trade Group Tightens Standards for Certified Seal Program - Olive Oil Times
Enter keywords and hit Go →
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

Trade Group Tightens Standards for Certified Seal Program

By Paolo DeAndreis
Mar. 16, 2026 20:05 UTC
Summary Summary

The North American Olive Oil Association has imple­mented stricter require­ments for its Certified Seal pro­gram to ensure qual­ity and purity of olive oil in the U.S., reflect­ing con­sumer demand for trans­parency. The pro­gram, already on nearly half of branded olive oil bot­tles, includes tighter chem­i­cal lim­its and shelf-life para­me­ters, with plans to expand into Canada.

The North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA) has announced tougher require­ments for its NAOOA Certified Seal pro­gram, a vol­un­tary ini­tia­tive designed to ver­ify the qual­ity and purity of olive oil sold in the United States.

According to the asso­ci­a­tion, the updated frame­work intro­duces stricter ver­i­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dures and stronger over­sight across the sup­ply chain, reflect­ing ris­ing con­sumer demand for trans­parency and reli­a­bil­ity in the olive oil cat­e­gory.

NAOOA esti­mates that the pro­gram already appears on about 49 per­cent of branded olive oil bot­tles sold in the U.S.

“Nearly half the mar­ket has cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate in the only seal pro­gram in the U.S. that involves reg­u­lar ran­dom off-the-shelf test­ing. That val­i­dates what we’ve known for years – trans­parency builds trust,” said Joseph R. Profaci, NAOOA exec­u­tive direc­tor.

The asso­ci­a­tion said the new para­me­ters behind the seal are intended to offer con­sumers a broader guar­an­tee of qual­ity.

Among the changes are stricter chem­i­cal lim­its, includ­ing a reduc­tion in the max­i­mum free acid­ity for extra vir­gin olive oil from 0.8 per­cent, the inter­na­tional stan­dard, to 0.5 per­cent. That matches the limit pro­posed in NAOOA’s peti­tion to the FDA for a fed­eral stan­dard of iden­tity for olive oil, filed jointly with the American Olive Oil Producers’ Association.

The new frame­work also tight­ens shelf-life para­me­ters by lim­it­ing the ​“best if used by” date to no more than 18 months from bot­tling.

The NAOOA Certified pro­gram was cre­ated to pro­vide an added layer of assur­ance in a mar­ket where olive oil often trav­els long dis­tances and passes through mul­ti­ple stages of bot­tling and dis­tri­b­u­tion before reach­ing retail shelves.

The vast major­ity of olive oil con­sumed in the United States is imported, mak­ing ship­ping and han­dling a major chal­lenge for pro­duc­ers and their trad­ing part­ners.

That reliance on imports cre­ates a com­plex reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ment. Food imports enter­ing the United States are mon­i­tored by the FDA in coor­di­na­tion with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which checks that prod­ucts meet safety and label­ing require­ments before enter­ing the coun­try.

Once prod­ucts move through the domes­tic dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem, how­ever, or when imported oils are bot­tled in the United States, fed­eral over­sight of extra vir­gin qual­ity claims can become less con­sis­tent at the retail level.

Under the NAOOA pro­gram, olive oils bear­ing the seal are sub­ject to lab­o­ra­tory test­ing intended to ver­ify both purity and com­pli­ance with the program’s stan­dards. The new ini­tia­tive aims to increase test­ing fre­quency and expand the pro­gram into Canada, with pos­si­ble fur­ther growth in the future.

According to the asso­ci­a­tion, this on-shelf approach is intended to ver­ify prod­uct con­di­tion as con­sumers encounter them in the mar­ket­place, rather than rely­ing solely on doc­u­men­ta­tion from ear­lier stages of the sup­ply chain.

The cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram also includes a qual­ity-track­ing data­base for year-over-year mon­i­tor­ing to help com­pa­nies and retail­ers improve sup­ply chain man­age­ment. It also man­dates third-party audits of every facil­ity where NAOOA Certified prod­ucts are bot­tled.

Market ana­lysts have also pointed to the frag­mented reg­u­la­tory land­scape in the United States. As Giovanni Quaratesi, global head of olive oil at NielsenIQ, noted recently, there is no sin­gle fed­eral frame­work that sys­tem­at­i­cally ver­i­fies extra vir­gin clas­si­fi­ca­tion on shelves across the U.S. mar­ket. In that envi­ron­ment, pri­vate cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams and retailer pro­cure­ment poli­cies can play an impor­tant role in rein­forc­ing trace­abil­ity and prod­uct integrity.

Advertisement

Quaratesi said retail­ers and buy­ers are increas­ingly rely­ing on sup­pli­ers that pro­vide cred­i­ble ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tems and third-party cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

“These changes reflect our com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous improve­ment,” Profaci said. ​“Consumer con­fi­dence is the foun­da­tion of growth in our indus­try, and it’s a key­stone of our recent 2026 State of the Industry report. As house­hold pen­e­tra­tion reaches 50.9 per­cent, a num­ber we want to see go even higher, we have a respon­si­bil­ity to ensure every bot­tle deliv­ers what the con­sumer expects.”

The tight­en­ing of the NAOOA pro­gram comes as mon­i­tor­ing activ­ity inten­si­fies across the North American mar­ket. In a recent test­ing ini­tia­tive cov­er­ing prod­ucts sold in the United States and Canada, NAOOA ana­lyzed hun­dreds of retail sam­ples from lead­ing brands and pri­vate-label oils.

The study found that adul­ter­ation was rare among the largest brands, but it also iden­ti­fied sev­eral prod­ucts that did not meet the extra vir­gin clas­si­fi­ca­tion stated on the label, prompt­ing the asso­ci­a­tion to pur­sue legal action against some of the com­pa­nies involved.

These devel­op­ments are unfold­ing as pol­i­cy­mak­ers in Washington debate whether to intro­duce clearer national stan­dards for olive oil label­ing. A bill cur­rently before the U.S. Congress would require the FDA to estab­lish a fed­eral def­i­n­i­tion for olive oil cat­e­gories, includ­ing extra vir­gin, in an effort to pro­vide more con­sis­tent enforce­ment tools against mis­la­bel­ing and fraud.

More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement

Related Articles