U.S. Lab Gets IOC Nod for Olive Oil Chemistry Testing

For the first time, the International Olive Council (IOC) has bestowed accred­i­ta­tion on an inde­pen­dent U.S. lab­o­ra­tory for test­ing extra vir­gin olive oil sam­ples. ​“It’s an honor, really,” said John Reuther, pres­i­dent and lab direc­tor for the New Orleans-based Eurofins Central Analytical Laboratories.

The accred­i­ta­tion is sig­nif­i­cant news for domes­tic extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers and importers who, until now, attained indus­try-stan­dard authen­ti­ca­tion for their prod­ucts only by send­ing sam­ples abroad.

The IOC grants accred­i­ta­tion to chem­i­cal test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ries around the world (there are 80) that fol­low rec­om­mended meth­ods of analy­sis for purity, qual­ity, grade, and con­t­a­m­i­nants in olive oil.

Proper pro­ce­dural test­ing ensures the verac­ity of the oils and pro­tects con­sumers from prod­uct fraud. The appli­ca­tion and screen­ing process for chem­i­cal test­ing facil­i­ties was devel­oped to dis­tin­guish lab­o­ra­to­ries that use the sci­en­tific meth­ods pre­scribed by the IOC for iden­ti­fy­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tics of olive oils.

With no pre­de­ces­sors in the U.S. field, Eurofins had their work cut out for them, but Reuther said the com­pany was deter­mined to con­quer the vet­ting process.

“We’ve been rec­og­nized in the food busi­ness for many years and our sci­en­tists and key tech peo­ple always sat on expert pan­els and par­tic­i­pated in AOCS (American Oil Chemists Society) con­fer­ences,” he said.

Importers and domes­tic pro­duc­ers, tired of send­ing sam­ples to Europe or Australia, encour­aged Eurofins to get in the game. ​“Every year, we’d hear, ​‘are you ready yet?’ And we knew that if you really want to be rec­og­nized in the busi­ness, you need to be approved by the IOC,” Reuther said.

As part of a global net­work of mar­ket-lead­ing resources and inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized exper­tise, Eurofins’ rep­u­ta­tion may have pro­vided some influ­ence in get­ting the IOC to look care­fully at the U.S.-based lab. Yet the process was nonethe­less rig­or­ous. The com­pany missed the mark in pro­fi­ciency test­ing in its first appli­ca­tion in 2015 but improved sub­stan­tially by this year. In late November, noti­fi­ca­tion arrived they had made the exclu­sive team.

The company’s next step is to get to work, mon­i­tor­ing the qual­ity of both imported and domes­tic extra vir­gin olive oil and work­ing with pro­duc­ers and large retail­ers who mar­ket prod­ucts under their own pri­vate labels. ​“Our game plan is ready to exe­cute,” said Reuther. ​“Our pri­mary goal right now is to be sure we’re pro­vid­ing the high­est qual­ity data in the indus­try.”