Team:UC Davis/Policy Practices Overview

The large-scale sale of defective olive oil is an issue that affects many stakeholders, from consumers to olive growers. A leading motivation for our project was the desire to develop a device that could bolster quality in the olive oil industry by cheaply detecting rancidity. 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?

This problem space was explored by gathering information from stakeholders in the olive oil industry, including producers, millers, and research scientists. We set aside our research several times throughout the summer to explore stakeholder needs and to better understand quality issues in the olive oil industry on a practical level. This led us to attend a public hearing at the State Capitol on the topic of new California standards, to understand perspectives on and demand for enhanced quality control measures. We also met with producers and millers at their production facilities to ascertain how a biosensor could meet their respective needs. Lastly, to discover if the public would change buying habits in response to accessible quality control, we conducted several olive oil tastings at a local grocer and collected data.

We found that our device could best be used by producers to augment their current quality control infrastructure, and by retailers to allow an economical, rapid evaluation of their stock. We envision olive oil producers utilizing our device as an additional means of quickly and cheaply evaluating product quality, and retailers performing spot-checks on their inventory to ensure that their olive oil has not become rancid. This may assist the olive oil industry improve its produce, and in doing so, ensuring fresher, healthier, and tastier olive oil for everyone.

Read full version of our practice and policy report

Throughout the summer we met with representatives from the largest producers of extra virgin olive oil in California: California Olive Ranch, Corto Olive Company, and Seka Hills Olive Company. We were able to tour their production facilities, discussing producer interest in new analytical devices, and learning about industry quality control. We came to understand that if olives are mishandled and the olive oil is stored improperly (becoming exposed to light or heat) the oil will lose important health benefits, such as antioxidants and monounsaturated fats, and become rancid [1].

Therefore, it is important for producers to be able to test their oil for compounds indicative of rancidity. They informed us of the lack of fast, efficient and easy-to-use tools available for them to make measurements of the chemical composition within their olive oil. They verified that measuring the concentrations of certain aldehydes would be indicative of whether or not the oil has, in fact, become rancid. They currently perform quality measurements using GC-MS, which is an expensive machine that can take up to weeks to obtain results. A simpler means of detecting rancidity made available producers could complement current quality control schemes and allow producers to rapidly classify their olive oil as rancid or not---without the hassle of expensive instrumentation. These olive mill visits encouraged us to build such a device, designing it to categorically detect rancid chemicals, specifically aldehydes, in olive oil.

To learn more about the Olive Mill Visits click here.

This summer, we participated in several olive oil tastings hosted by the UC Davis Olive Center. While attending the “Advanced Sensory Evaluation of Olive Oil Certification Course” we became informed about the positive and negative attributes of tasting olive oil, learning how to distinguish between characteristics such as fusty, musty, fruity, bitter, and pungent. We also learned that extra virgin olive oil provides consumers with a unique blend of compounds offering improved metabolic, immune system, and physiological properties [1]. However, the myriad of health benefits derived from olive oil are largely contingent upon the quality of the olive oil. The most important conditions contributing to the healthiness of olive oil are its being extra virgin, unadulterated, and in particular, not rancid [2].

Using this information we decided to reach out to our community. We held an olive oil tasting at a local Davis grocer called the COOP where we asked consumers to taste three varieties of olive oils, two of which were extra virgin olive oil, and one of which was rancid. We let them decide which one they would buy based on sensory appraisal and taste. Our goal was to educate consumers about how fresh extra virgin olive oil tastes compared to the rancid olive oil, and how the two differ with regard to health properties. We explained that olive oil will cease to provide health benefits once it has degraded due to oxidation, heating, or sun exposure. Through speaking with consumers, we also learned that they would change their purchasing habits if there were labels on the bottles indicating the quality of the oil. This inspired our decision to build a device to test for rancid chemicals in olive oil.

To learn more about Public Perception click here.

A leading motivation for our project was the desire to bolster quality control standards in the olive oil industry by providing a cost-effective device for the detection of defective product. However, before we could tailor our project to meet the needs of the industry, we needed to learn more about the ways in which regional and multinational organizations monitor and dictate quality standards. On July 15, the CDFA organized a public hearing at the State Capitol to record evidence and testimony presented by olive growers, millers, and the general public on a set of standards proposed by the Olive Oil Commission California (OOCC). Our team attended this hearing and learnt that an ongoing difficulty for the olive oil industry is getting public policy to more tightly define what constitutes rancidity, adulteration, and ultimately fraud [1].

We believe that our biosensor could enable producers to cheaply and rapidly test the quality of their olive oil stock, and thus to supply the market with only high quality olive oil, in compliance with the new California State standards.

To learn more about Legislation and California State Standards click here.