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A heated debate between olive oil pro­duc­ers in Crete and Sevitel, the asso­ci­a­tion of Greek bot­tlers of olive oil, has ignited over the inten­tion of the Cretan pro­duc­ers to mar­ket their olive oil under one com­mon PGI label.

Α group of Cretan pro­duc­ers rep­re­sent­ing all the island’s regions has sub­mit­ted an appli­ca­tion to the Greek Ministry of Agriculture to obtain Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) sta­tus for the name ​“Crete” with the European Union.

With their appli­ca­tion, the Cretan pro­duc­ers aim for the full pro­duc­tion process of Cretan olive oil to take place exclu­sively on the island, includ­ing the har­vest­ing, pro­cess­ing and bot­tling of the olive oil.

In response to the appli­ca­tion, Sevitel has lodged an objec­tion with the min­istry to block the process, claim­ing that the olive oil pro­duced in Crete should be allowed to be bot­tled any­where else in the world.

A PGI label is a geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion attrib­uted to food prod­ucts linked with a spe­cific area of an E.U. mem­ber state that sat­is­fies sev­eral cri­te­ria with at least one of the pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing or prepa­ra­tion of the prod­uct tak­ing place within the par­tic­u­lar area.

Sevitel’s rea­son­ing to object is based on the stip­u­la­tion of the E.U.‘s reg­u­la­tion per­tain­ing to Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and PGI labels for the unob­structed cir­cu­la­tion of prod­ucts and ser­vices when labels are granted.

Large quan­ti­ties of the Greek, and by exten­sion the Cretan, olive oil pro­duced each year are exported in bulk to extra‑E.U. des­ti­na­tions and Italy for bot­tling, with Greek pro­duc­ers endur­ing the loss of sell­ing an unbranded prod­uct com­pared with a branded olive oil.

The Cretan pro­duc­ers are look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on their prod­uct, while Sevitel is try­ing to pro­tect the vested inter­est of bot­tlers out­side of Crete: the island accounts for almost a third of Greece’s annual olive oil pro­duc­tion and being unable to acquire Cretan olive oil would deprive bot­tlers of an impor­tant resource.

“We remain firm in our posi­tion, and we do not nego­ti­ate the view of Sevitel to send our olive oil in bulk for bot­tling all over Greece, ” the pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion of Heraklion said in a press release.

“The term pro­tected geo­graph­i­cal indi­ca­tion in itself allows us to under­stand that it refers to a spe­cific, delim­ited area with all that derives from it, that is, all the pro­ce­dures to be done in the spe­cific area,” they added.

“It is not only about the olive oil per se, but also about the local facil­i­ties and the peo­ple of Crete to work, the local sell­ers of pack­ag­ing mate­ri­als, the trans­port com­pa­nies, the whole olive oil pro­duc­tion infra­struc­ture required for Cretan olive oil to leave the island pack­aged,” the asso­ci­a­tion con­cluded.

No con­sen­sus on the mat­ter was reached dur­ing a recent tele­meet­ing between the two par­ties.

The objec­tion of Sevitel will be exam­ined by the appeal com­mit­tee of the Ministry of Agriculture within five months from fil­ing, the min­istry told Olive Oil Times in an email mes­sage.

If the Cretan pro­duc­ers’ appli­ca­tion for a PGI label is accepted, it will be for­warded to the European Commission for fur­ther eval­u­a­tion.

• Agrocapital
• Agronews