Team:UC Davis/Legislation

A core tenet of our project is that the ethical problem of defective and mislabeled olive oil is a global issue, not a regional issue. The desired solution is one that helps all stakeholders, domestic and international. So in response to the widespread sale of rancid and mislabeled olive oil, we sought to answer the following questions in our project: could a cost-effective, robust biosensor be developed that can detect aldehydes at the target levels, and be used in the field? If so, what sector(s) of the olive oil industry would benefit from the device and be likely to utilize it in a commercial setting?

Before we could answer these questions, we first needed to learn how quality is defined within the industry. This problem space was explored by gathering information from stakeholders in the olive oil industry, including producers, millers, and research scientists. In particular, we wanted to better understand the ways in which regional and multinational organizations define and regulate quality standards. We also wanted to better understand how olive oil quality measures are put into practice, and how our device could be adapted for this purpose. This pursuit of knowledge led us to meet with many stakeholders, from producers and millers, to trade representatives at the State Capitol.

On July 15, the team attended a California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) organized public hearing at the State Capitol in which recorded evidence and testimony was presented by olive growers, millers, and the general public on a set of standards proposed by the Olive Oil Commission of California(OOCC) entitled Grade and Labeling Standards for Olive oil, Refined-Olive Oil and Olive-Pomace Oil. (The OOCC is a organization of Californian olive growers and millers that represents their common interests). From what we learned at the hearing, there is a growing interest in strengthening existing quantitative standards for olive oil quality. Consequently, we understood that a quantitative device would be the focus of our project. In the following discussion, we discuss the ways in which our project could help the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) maintain new California State standards on the quality of commercial olive oil.

On September 18th, 2014, the CDFA approved these standards, providing for improved labeling and testing standards for olive oil produced in California. These new standards were designed to place stricter regulations on the quality of virgin and extra virgin olive oil sold in California, and came into effect on Sept. 26, 2014. “Consumers and the trade need to understand the important quality difference between extra virgin/virgin olive oils … [the] California olive industry standard does this better than any of its many predecessors,” testified Paul Miller, president of the Australian Olive Association, at the public hearing in Sacramento on July 15th [1]. In the words of Dick Neilsen of McEvoy Ranch, “without better labeling standards, product grade standards and product testing, the ruse will continue” [2].

An ongoing difficulty for the olive oil industry is getting public policy to more tightly define what constitutes rancidity, adulteration, and ultimately fraud. According to Dan Flynn, executive director of the UC Davis Olive Center, “Importers assume that existing IOC standards have adequately guarded against fraud, which is clearly not the case” [1].

As mentioned before, rancidity is most likely to affect imported olive oil products since transport and storage times are key factors leading to rancidity. It is, of course, possible that any olive oil producer or processor could willfully adulterate olive oil with rancid olive oil or even canola oil. Producers who adulterate their olive oil, or who sell old and rancid stock do so to save money, because filling larger quotas with lower quality product is more product than filling small quotas with higher quality product. Notwithstanding, since California olive oil producers serving the domestic market will not face the significant international transport challenge they could be more likely to produce a high quality product into the market. Assuming that the biosensor technology will be able to detect rancidity in olive oil products, it is likely that the device could help distributors and retailers--the elements in the supply chain most likely to encounter rancid, imported olive--to identify potentially defective product. This in turn may bolster the overall quality of the olive oil market, and simultaneously strengthen the nascent Californian olive oil industry by discriminating against lower-quality products and incentivizing quality produce as enforced by the state standards.

In summary, we believe that the success of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) in implementing olive oil standards is a step forward in the common effort of bettering global olive oil management and quality. With sufficient optimization, our biosensor could also potentially help producers and distributors cheaply and quickly evaluate the quality of their oil, helping the industry as a whole produce fresher, healthier, and tastier olive oil for everyone.