Australia Asks Codex to Raise the Olive Oil Campesterol Limit

Australia, backed by Argentina, the United States and New Zealand, is asking the world food standards body Codex to raise the campesterol limit for olive oil from 4.0 to 4.8 percent, saying the current figure wrongly fails genuine oils from some varieties and climates. The question goes to the Codex Committee on Fats and Oils in Malaysia from February 25. Here is what campesterol is, why a number on a sterol table matters to growers, and why Europe is wary.

What is being proposed

Campesterol is one of the plant sterols in olive oil. The Codex standard caps it at 4.0 percent of total sterols, not for health reasons but because oils such as canola are much richer in it, so a high reading is a classic sign that olive oil has been cut with something cheaper. When UC Davis found canola in a foodservice “extra virgin” last September, campesterol well over the limit was part of the evidence.

The trouble, say the newer producing countries, is that some honest oils go over 4.0 percent on their own. A discussion paper prepared for the Codex meeting, reported by Olive Oil Times this week, asks for 4.8 percent, a value it says “would encompass the great majority of oils produced from Barnea, Arbequina, Koreneiki, Cornicabra and similar high-campesterol varieties, regardless of where in the world they are grown.” The paper argues that the present limit “acts as a technical barrier to trade in virgin olive oils.”

The US government lists the item on the agenda for the Langkawi meeting in a Federal Register notice published today, alongside a second olive oil paper on delta-7-stigmastenol, another sterol limit that some oils from newer producing countries have trouble meeting. The USDA and FDA will hold a public meeting on the US positions on February 5.

The evidence and the trade-off

According to the paper, about a third of 888 Australian samples collected over several years and seasons had campesterol above 4.0 percent, and studies there pointed to variety and growing conditions, not adulteration or poor quality. Anticipating the obvious objection, that a looser campesterol limit makes cheating easier, the authors offer to tighten the limit for stigmasterol, which rises when soybean oil is added, to 1.9 percent.

This is not a new fight. Australia and the United States have been pushing to change parts of the olive oil standard for years (Australia and US try to change olive oil standards). At the last session in February 2011, a proposal to start work on campesterol failed to win support, but the door was left open for new data in 2013. The International Olive Council’s executive director, Jean-Louis Barjol, wrote afterwards that its member delegations had agreed IOC studies were under way and that it was premature for Codex to act.

Why it matters

• Codex standards are the reference in trade disputes and for many importing countries, so a genuine oil that fails a Codex limit can be refused or downgraded even if nothing is wrong with it.
• The IOC and most Mediterranean producers worry that every loosened limit is a gap a blender can use.
• Growers of Arbequina and Koroneiki in Australia, Argentina and California are the ones caught in the middle.

For the history of how the IOC adds and adjusts limits, see IOC Turns 50 and Adds an Alkyl Ester Limit for Extra Virgin.

Sources

• Olive Oil Times: Australia Leads New Push to Raise Campesterol Limit for Olive Oil
• Federal Register: Codex Alimentarius Commission, Meeting of the Codex Committee on Fats and Oils (January 23, 2013)