Pressing for Greater Olive Oil Oversight

When is a virgin not always a virgin?

When the "virgin" describes the type of olive oil sold in the United States.

In a rare case of a trade group asking the federal government for more regulation, the California Olive Oil Council is pressing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to tighten its grading standards. The council wants to prevent domestic and foreign producers from blending lower-grade olive oil, and even other oils such as canola, into what can be sold domestically as "extra virgin" olive oil.

The problem, said Bruce Golino, president of the trade group, is that the U.S. has no legal definition for extra virgin, which in other parts of the world denotes the highest grade of the product. This has created a loophole that allows producers to give their oils a premium label that doesn't truly reflect what's in the bottle, said Antoinette Addison, who with her husband, Shawn, operates olive orchard and mill Figueroa Farms in Santa Ynez, Calif.

Although some California producers market blended oils as extra virgin, the move to tighten the rules is aimed squarely at importers.

Olive oil grading standards are generally stricter in Europe, where most of the world's olive oil is produced. Rules in the U.S. allow foreign producers to ship lower-quality oil here under premium labels, California growers say. Their hope is that tightening U.S. standards will force importers to increase their quality and that as a result, "they will have to charge more," said Paul Vossen, a Santa Rosa, Calif.-based farm advisor with the University of California. "That will make our industry more competitive."

The North American Olive Oil Assn., the trade group representing the importers, also supports "updating the industry standards," said Bob Bauer, its president. But Bauer said mislabeling oil wasn't as big a problem as the California producers claimed. Although "there may be some smaller players" doing it, he said, the association has a testing program and has not heard of widespread incidents of lower-grade oil being sold as extra virgin.

The USDA will soon solicit comments on proposals to change the standards, which have largely stayed the same since 1948. It could be a year or more before any of the rules are changed.