The New US Olive Oil Standards – Going for Bronze
admin | June 7, 2010The US imports 260,000 tons of olive oil each year (Source: IOC), the vast majority coming from Spain, Italy and Greece. While there are no firm statistics on this, some estimate that around 70% of the imports are refined olive oils. These are branded as ‘pure’, ‘light’ and ‘olive oil’
I’m pretty certain that most of the folks who buy one of these types of oil are unaware that the oil has been refined. Not surprising really, as to date, there has been no legal labeling requirement to state how the oil was produced. My feeling is that producers of ‘pure’ and ‘light ‘ olive oils would not want their consumer to know is that most of its flavour, aroma and health giving micronutrients have been stripped away by refining.
This brings me to the much lauded recent olive oil grades determined by the USDA. I first came across the final version while judging at the 2010 Los Angeles International Olive Oil Show. I had a bit of time to look at them while the other judges slaved away at the flavoured oil classes. Even a cursory glance sent alarm bells ringing. Oh no. They’ve fallen in line with the international standards. And as the unpleasant pong of roasted garlic wafted across room, I got the strong ‘what the hell were they thinking’ taste in my mouth.
Let’s start with the U.S. Extra Virgin Grade which incidentally is no different from the International Olive Council definition for EVOO:
U.S. Extra Virgin Olive Oil is virgin olive oil which has excellent flavor and odor (median of defects equal to zero and median of fruitiness greater than zero) and a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.8 grams per 100 grams, and meets additional requirements as outlined.
There’s a major contraction here. “Excellent flavour and aroma”, yet the “median of fruitiness greater than 0” only means that even if ½ the official tasting panel perceived even a hint of aroma and flavour then it will meet the standard. Hardly excellent.
To the chemistry.
Less than 0.8% free fatty acidity. WOW!!
Here is the distribution of FFA’s of Australian olive oils submitted to the Australian National Show half a decade ago.
In over 330 oils, only one was over 0,8% acidity,and the average was around 0.19%. As an Australian I’m not trying to brag here. I’m just giving the results of a bunch of honest olive growers following good industry practice – good quality olives being quickly processed into oil using clean mills and being stored correctly.
So which oils do get close to the upper FFA limit set down by the USDA? Short answer: imported supermarket oils. The 0.8% level doesn’t guarantee quality in any way or form. It simply allows rubbishy oils to hit the supermarket shelves in the US, Australia and Canada and still be legimately labelled as EVOO. The US consumers are being misled again, simply because the international standards are so lax.
Now to the largely irrelevent grades. The ones you will rarely if ever see, but a lot of thought has gone into defining them nevertheless:
U.S. Virgin Olive Oil is virgin olive oil which has reasonably good flavor and odor (median of defects between zero and 2.5 and median of fruitiness greater than zero) and a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 2.0 grams per 100 grams, and meets additional requirements as appropriate. Olive oil that falls into this classification shall not be graded above “U.S. Virgin Olive Oil.”
The ambiguously ‘reasonably good flavor’ aside, the 2% acidity = complete and absolute rubbish. You can leave olives on the ground for 5 months and after making oil out of them, pile them up for a couple of weeks so they ferment to a pile of compost before processing and the acidity will still probably be less under 2%. In short, you have to be a complete butcher to produce oils with this chemistry.
U.S. Virgin Olive Oil Not Fit For Human Consumption Without Further Processing (also known as U.S. Lampante Virgin Olive Oil), is virgin olive oil which has poor flavor and odor (median of defects between 2.5 and 6.0 or when the median of defects is less than or equal to 2.5 and the median of fruit is zero), a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of more than 2.0 grams per 100 grams, and meets other additional requirements. Olive oil that falls into this classification shall not be graded above “U.S. Virgin Olive Oil Not Fit for Human Consumption Without Further Processing.” It is intended for refining or for purposes other than food use.
The tiny amount of this stuff that may occasionally show up is either turned into soap or sent off to a seed oil refinery, eventually ending up in a canola oil near you. But lampante oil is not really the domain of new world producers like the US as they have the expertise and production capacity to avoid making this crap in the first place.
Now to the most important grades volume wise:
U.S. Olive Oil is the oil consisting of a blend of refined olive oil and virgin olive oils fit for consumption without further processing. It has a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 1.0 gram per 100 grams, has acceptable odor and flavor characteristic of “virgin olive oil,” and meets other additional requirements. Olive oil that falls into this classification shall not be graded above “U.S. Olive Oil.” The maximum level permitted of total alpha-tocopherol in the final product is 200 mg/kg.
In my humble opinion, the following two definitions are a bad result for US EVOO producers and consumers.
“A blend of refined and virgin olive oils” is pretty ambiguous. Even a blend of 1% virgin olive oil with 99% refined would qualify.
What does ‘’acceptable” flavour mean? Presumably if it has ‘some’ flavour and it doesn’t make you puke then it would qualify. So under these criteria, a refined olive oil with the slightest flavour can be called olive oil.
What a great result for importers of refined olive oil into the US! The status quo is retained. You can still put a largely refined olive oil into the US market and not admit that it is refined. It’s ‘olive oil’, just like it was before.
U.S. Refined Olive Oil is the olive oil obtained from virgin olive oils by refining methods that do not lead to alterations in the initial glyceridic structure (basic glycerin-fatty acid structure). It has a free fatty acid content, expressed as oleic acid, of not more than 0.3 grams per 100 grams, is flavorless and odorless and meets other additional requirements. Olive oil that falls into this classification shall not be graded above “U.S. Refined Olive Oil” (this is a limiting rule). The addition of alpha-tocopherol is permitted to restore natural tocopherol lost in the refining process. The maximum level is 200 mg/kg of total alpha-tocopherol in the final product.
In the language of Sienfeld. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda. This is the standard definition of refined olive oil, but lets face it… what right minded producer of refined oil would want “REFINED OLIVE OIL” plastered all over their label when they could easily justify the use of the term “OLIVE OIL”?
My guess is that not a single EU produced refined olive oil sold in the US will have the word refined on the label. Time will tell. Please post a comment on this blog if you find an example of it. I’d love to see it.
Hi Richard,
In criticizing the IOOC (and now, it seems, USDA) EVOO standard, you’ve a few times noted that even average Aussie EVOOs submitted to the Australian National Show some while back were better than the standard. I’m sure you’re also comparing it to what you see in your own consultancy practice privately. But is this really a fair standard? Presumably, after all, makers of merely mediocre olive oils wouldn’t be submitting to a national competition, and wouldn’t be engaging the professional services of a consultant taster, blender, and scientific analyst. Ie, isn’t it likely that what you’re really seeing is that “average” premium EVOO easily meets the criteria of a high-quality EVOO — in which case, it’s actually a pretty good standard?
What we really need, ISTM, is a blind, nationwide, random pull of supermarket labeled “EVOO” off the shelves of grocery stores and boutique shops in the US, Italy, Greece, and Spain, to see what’s really out there. I also think it’d be good to have a genuine “gold standard” EVOO, like “Premium Grade EVOO,” but that kind of “extra-high” standard is always resisted by the mass industry (cf organics, environmental standards, etc), and random testing after the standards are implemented to ensure that companies are living up to the standards.
Also, one very good thing about the proposed standards is the elimination of the ability to call highly-refined olive oil “pure” olive oil.
Hi Micheal
Thanks once again for your thoughtful comment.
I get your logic about the FFA of show entries being lower than the average oil. However, one nice thing about the Australian National Show is that its class structure is based on the production volume of the oil being exhibited. So it is pretty easy to distinguish the boutique producers from those producing tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of litres of that oil. The FFA of the large producer class (Class 3) over the last 8 years is less than 0.01% higher than the show average, and in some years has even been lower. Many of the oils in class 3 have production volumes of 100,000 litres or more and are the oils that end up on Australain supermarkets as produce of Australia.
Also the biggest olive oil lab here in Australia published the average FFA of oils submitted to them in 2002/2003 (Mailer 2005). Now some of these oils would have been submitted to the lab because the producer saw a problem, and as a result some of these tested oils would never have made it onto a retail shelf. So this average probably overestimates the average FFA of what was actually out there. And it was….. 0.28%. The National Show average that year was 0.23%. Also, it would be fair to say that over the last 8 years, the FFA would have gone down a litte as the Oz industry was still in its relative infancy back then. Anyway if we split the difference the value is still around 3 to 4 times lower than the IOC, and now USDA standard.
Some years ago I was involved in a tasting for an independent consumer magazine that was doing an article on supermarket olive oils. They did a survey, taking oils off supermarket shelves across Australia. These supermarkets had high turnover, and the oils were selected well within their best by dates. They tested them for FFA, peroxide and UV. Unfortunately I can’t say too much as the info was given to me in confidence, but lets just say that many of the FFA’s of European EVOO’s were at the upper end of the FFA range for EVOO rather than the lower.
My post stems out of a bit of frustration. Back in 1997 when the Australian industry was in its infancy and largely disorganised, our equivalent of the USDA produced a set of EVOO standards. They took the easy road and stuck with the IOC standard at the time, and also gave the policing role of all EVOO’s (both imported and domestic) to the trade associations of importers here in Australia. Despite the efforts of many, to tighten the standards, they haven’t changed since. So from experience, once a standard is put in place it will stay there for a very long time. The previous USDA standards were published in 1946! The Government bodies have more to think about than olive oil, so their attitude is ‘job done’ don’t bother us, you had your chance. We’re now looking at Asian vegetables, or whatever now.
So this was a golden opportunity to improve the average standard of EVOO’s on US supermarket shelves. It could have been a great win for US consumers but instead very little will change as the FFA limit is so high that all the current oils will continue to make the D- grade. So little will change in that respect anyway. Finally, I’m not sure that the new standards will preclude the use of pure and light on labels. Unless I missed some fine print somewhere, as long as the grade is stated on the label somewhere, and all the other bits are not misleading, then it meets the legalities. But as always I’m happy to stand corrected.
Your idea about the survey is a good one. However you’d have to ask, who would do it, and who would pay for it. The COOC would on face value seem the logical choice, but it would be easy to level the accusation that the results were biased. So it would have to be a body with no commercial or political interest in olive oil. Now that would be a bit harder.
Cheers once again. RG
Hi Richard,
What do you think of the Association 3E standard? Based on what you say, the peroxide value would be only modestly better than the Aussie average , and the FFA actually not as good; also, I’m not quite clear on how the sensory profile is set, though if it is the same scale as the IOC it’s clearly better than just median of fruitiness > 0 . But they do add in strong documentation and traceability standards, Still, a significant step up, no? What sort of standard would you set?
Hi Michael
I think it prudent not to comment specifically about the commercial activities of any producer or group. I’m sure that your average olive oil maker is quite capable of weighing up the pros and cons of signing up to any new standards organisation. But logically I’d think that the 3E model really won’t have much of an effect on improving the overall standard of EVOO as you would think that those signing up to 3E will be smallish producers who already meet their criteria.
On the other hand, if the USDA standard for FFA was tightened even slightly over the existing IOC standard, say to 0.6% then the overall standard of EVOO widely available to US consumers would improve.
What would I set? I guess it doesn’t matter what I think. The lower the better of course, but in reality, any abrupt significant reduction of FFA level would have significant socio-economic ramifications for EU producers (and whether New World producers like it or not the Europeans believe they own ‘Brand EVOO’ – they created it of course!). But a gradual lowering of the official FFA level (even if driven by a large importing nation like the US), would allow producers wherever they are, to adjust their practices in a positive way. And the consumers of EVOO would be the ultimate winners.
RG