Europe Orders Risk-Based Checks on Olive Oil Grades
The European Commission has ordered every member state to check olive oil on a risk basis, at a minimum rate of one check per 1,000 tons marketed each year, and to report the results to Brussels. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 299/2013, published in the Official Journal today, also makes everyone who holds olive oil between the mill and the bottling line keep a stock register, and updates two lab tests. Here is what changes and why it matters for the bottle you buy.
What happened
The Commission adopted the regulation on March 26 and it appears today, March 28, in the Official Journal of the European Union (L 90). It amends Regulation (EEC) No 2568/91, the long-running rulebook that defines the grades of olive oil and the lab methods used to test them. The regulation enters into force seven days after publication, but most of it applies from January 1, 2014, giving national authorities time to organize.
The reasoning is stated plainly in the preamble: “experience has shown certain risks of fraud” that stop the existing rules from fully protecting consumers. After years of complaints that grade standards on paper were not matched by checks in practice, this is Brussels putting numbers on enforcement.
The main changes
| Change | What the regulation says |
|---|---|
| Risk-based checks | Member states must check that oil matches its declared grade, choosing targets by risk |
| Minimum number | At least one conformity check per 1,000 tons of olive oil marketed per year |
| Stock registers | Anyone holding olive oil or pomace oil from the mill up to and including bottling must record entries and withdrawals for each category |
| Penalties | Must be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive”, with more frequent checks where serious problems turn up |
| Reporting | An annual report to the Commission by May 31, using a standard template, with the first reports due in 2015 |
| Lab methods | New texts for the ultraviolet test and for the ECN 42 triglyceride test used to detect small amounts of seed oil |
How “risk” will be judged
The regulation gives national inspectors a checklist of what makes a lot suspicious. It includes the grade of oil, the time of year it was produced, its price compared with other vegetable oils, blending and packing, storage conditions, the country of origin and destination, the means of transport and the size of the lot. It also points at the business itself: where it sits in the chain, how many grades it handles, whether it mills, stores, refines, blends or bottles, what earlier checks found, and how reliable its own quality controls are.
Inspectors are also told to think about where they check. The list includes the first point of entry into the Union, the last point of exit, and the places where oil is produced, packed, loaded or sold to the consumer. In other words, the ports and the blending plants, not just the supermarket shelf.
What it means for buyers
One check per 1,000 tons is a floor, not a flood. To put it in proportion, the International Olive Council’s figures show Spain exported a record 968,146 tons in 2011/12, and the IOC puts Spanish consumption at some 580,000 tons a year. By my rough arithmetic that is about 1.5 million tons marketed, so a minimum in the region of 1,500 checks a year for the world’s largest producer. That is meaningful, but it will not put an inspector in every warehouse.
The register rule may matter more in the long run. Most grade fraud happens between the bulk tank and the bottle, where refined oil or a tired old lot can be blended into something sold as extra virgin. A written record of what came in and what went out, by grade, gives inspectors a paper trail to follow when a lab result looks wrong.
- Nothing changes on the label because of this regulation.
- The checks begin to count from 2014, so do not expect instant results.
- Your own taste and a harvest date remain the best everyday defense.
Fraud in this trade rarely looks like a truck of sunflower oil. It looks like a warehouse where the extra virgin coming out somehow outweighs the extra virgin going in. That is exactly what a stock register by grade is designed to catch, and it is why the people most nervous about this rule are not the mills but some of the traders and blenders in the middle.
Sources
- EUR-Lex: Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 299/2013 of 26 March 2013 (OJ L 90, 28.3.2013)
- legislation.gov.uk: Regulation (EU) No 299/2013 amending Regulation (EEC) No 2568/91
- International Olive Council, Market Newsletter No 69, February 2013
- International Olive Council, Market Newsletter No 66, November 2012