Few products in the supermarket ask consumers to place quite as much faith in a label as olive oil. A bottle described as “extra virgin” may cost considerably more than an ordinary cooking oil, and shoppers often choose it precisely because they believe they are buying a minimally processed product with a particular flavor, composition and nutritional profile. Yet once the oil is inside a dark glass bottle, there is very little an ordinary consumer can do to determine whether its quality matches the description on the label.
The Food and Drug Administration appears ready to give that problem more attention. As part of its food program agenda, the agency says it is developing guidance for FDA staff on determining the identity, quality and purity of olive oil and olive-pomace oil products.
It sounds bureaucratic. For anyone who regularly spends $15, $20 or $30 on a bottle of extra-virgin olive oil, it could eventually be quite consequential. The United States already has detailed olive oil grades established by the Department of Agriculture. Under those standards, for example, U.S. Extra Virgin Olive Oil must have no sensory defects, demonstrate fruitiness and contain no more than 0.8 grams of free fatty acids, expressed as oleic acid, per 100 grams. The standards also distinguish virgin, refined and olive-pomace oils and establish additional chemical criteria.
There is a catch, however: USDA grade standards for specialty products are voluntary. They provide a common system for describing quality and can be used in USDA inspection and certification programs, but they are not the same thing as a mandatory FDA Standard of Identity governing what every bottle sold under a particular name must be. That distinction helps explain why olive oil has become an unusual case in American food regulation.
The FDA has created more than 250 Standards of Identity since 1939 for familiar foods ranging from milk and chocolate to breads, peanut butter and ketchup. These standards establish what certain foods must contain — and sometimes how they must be produced — partly to prevent what regulators call “economic adulteration”: selling consumers something different or inferior under a familiar name. Olive oil does not currently have one.
The FDA confirms that it is reviewing a citizen petition requesting a federal Standard of Identity for olive oil and olive-pomace oil. Separately, legislation introduced in Congress, the Olive Oil Standards Act, would require federal standards of identity and grades for olive oil products. Neither development, however, means that such mandatory standards are currently in effect.
What does “extra virgin” actually mean?
The terminology can be confusing because the different bottles sitting beside one another in a supermarket may represent substantially different products.
Extra-virgin olive oil is obtained without refining and is expected to meet both chemical and sensory quality criteria. Refined olive oil, by contrast, has undergone processing to remove undesirable characteristics. A product labeled simply “olive oil” under USDA grading terminology can consist of refined olive oil blended with virgin olive oils. Olive-pomace oil comes from the material remaining after the initial extraction of olive oil and undergoes its own processing.
Those distinctions are difficult, if not impossible, for a shopper to verify by looking at a bottle. And that is why identity and purity matter. The issue is not simply whether olive oil is “good” or “bad.” It is whether the product being sold corresponds to what consumers reasonably believe they are paying for.
FDA Standards of Identity were created for precisely that kind of problem. The agency notes that food standards historically helped combat economic adulteration by establishing basic characteristics consumers could expect when a familiar food name appeared on a package.
What the FDA is — and isn't — doing
The FDA's current initiative should not be interpreted as evidence that most olive oil on American supermarket shelves is fake, nor has the agency announced a crackdown on olive oil fraud. It also has not yet created a mandatory national Standard of Identity for olive oil.
What the FDA has announced is more preliminary: guidance is being developed to help its own staff evaluate the identity, quality and purity of olive oil and olive-pomace oil products. At the same time, the agency continues to consider the separate petition asking it to establish formal Standards of Identity.
That may sound like a modest regulatory step, but it puts federal attention on a basic question that consumers have been asking for years. When a bottle says extra virgin olive oil, how confident should you be that the oil inside actually deserves the name?
For a product whose price depends so heavily on those two words, getting a clearer federal answer may be long overdue.
SOURCE: USDA
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