The OKOER Report Exposes 10 Extra Virgin Olive Oil Distributors are Selling Unsafe & Counterfeit
Please note this is a summary adapted from www.okoer.com. The reason for provide the full report is to raise public awareness of the full report and notify the professional buyers that are selling these oils or similar to seek Okoer's advice before buying anymore stock.
Below are the Ratings of the Olive oils tested by Okoer.
Note:
That nearly 30% of the oils presented to the New York Olive Oil International Competition failed to reach NY in their healthiest state and were declared rancid.
There are No Italian oils in the 10 and this maybe because it is much harder to export Italian oils from the 2014 & soon 2015 season. As the domestic market has chosen the best oils to stay as the have had very poor season.
All of the oils are selling at prices below the realistic value suggests the vendors know the oil does not meet the label's description.
Pure extra virgin oil that is still fresh, with Free Fatty Acid (FFA) levels below 0.5%, low peroxide levels (20 milli equiv. O2/kg), high levels of polyphenols and antioxidants that make the oil a very healthy food.
All the Extra Virgin Olive Oils must pass the Mineral Oil Saturated Hydrocarbons (MOSH) and Mineral oil Aromatic Hydrocarbons (MOAH) tests. As well as the DAG (17%) & PPP (≥ 35% ) tests to establish the purity of the oil.
The first issue facing the buyer is to know how healthy the oil is. The buyer must know the condition of the fruit, then how the olive is harvested, crushed, filtered all on day one, stored and then shipped for resale to the distributor.
The second issue the buyer must cover to assess the health of the oil is too discover the management and storage conditions of the oil by the customs, the distributor, the delivery agents and finally how the oil is stocked on its shelves before going to the consumers.
Light, changes in temperatures, air are all able to change the composition of the extra virgin olive oil. All oils decompose as does a green banana turning light yellow to golden yellow and then into a light spotted brown, a brown smelly & sick mush.
Healthy Extra Virgin Olive oil has kept civilisation/s relatively for over 3,000 years.
Okoer.com sent 10 imported extra virgin olive oils for testing to Germany. Surprisingly, the samples met China's national standard requirements of "extra virgin olive oil".
But they failed the international standards & tests set for "extra virgin" olive oils.
Eight (8) just met the " virgin olive oil " level. Two (2) by EU’s laws, Olivoila and Oubote oils were evaluated to be “lampante olive oil". Neither smelt or tasted any fruit aroma in their oils. Those oils are neither for selling nor edible for people in EU.
GALLO (Portugal/ Distrib.Victor Guedes, Ind.com. S.A) is the only one which was evaluated as "extra virgin olive oil", but due to the mineral oil detected doing the MOSH detected was too high, the final rating is “C”;
Ybarra (Spain/Distrib. Aceites Ybarra, S.A. ), Beilina (Spain/ Distrib. Exiom Food S.A) PDO only detected minor mineral oil, but due to the bad taste failed to meet “extra virgin” level, so the ratings are “C”;
Abril (Spain/ Distrib. Aceites Abril S.L.), Muel (Spain/ Distrib. Mueloliva y Minerva S.L. ), and Betis (Spain/Distrib. Torres Y Ribelles) performed ordinarily in both tasting and mineral oil, the ratings are “C”;
Fragata (Spain/Distrib. Angel Camacho) and Agric (Greece/Distrib.Fakelali Bros.) mineral oil MOSH were pretty high, they also failed the taste indicators of "extra virgin" olive oil, so the ratings are “D”;
Olivoila (Spain / Distrib. Wilma) and Oubote (Spain/ Distrib. Maeva) oils, although they met the requirements of detection of mineral oil, but performed poor in sensory evaluation, rated to be the worst oils of 10 samples.
If a product violates the legal provisions and endangers the health of consumers it should not be sold in the market. Okoer directly rated 4 out of the 10 as D- (warning). Could this oil be unsafe?
Okoer are not the seeking to replicate nor evaluate the products to "meet the national standard" requirements, but they do seek to test whether the products can meet higher quality requirements. Okoer's evaluation standards were developed by their Germany professional team, that also refer back to the Chinese, the European Union, WHO and other authoritative standards. For the rest of 2015 & 2016, Okoer have advised they will focus on detecting the brands that are imported into, Hong Kong, Macao,Taiwan and Chinese markets.
Inspection Result of the 10 Oils tested
The result are very bad: 6 products are rated to C (Medium), 2 products are rated to D (poor), 2 products are rated to D- (warning).
It is worth noting, the physical and chemical indicators test results and sensory evaluation results (for taste and smell) do not match.
Because many sensory defeats can’t be determined by the physical and chemical indicators, therefore the sensory evaluation is more important than the physical and chemical testing. International Olive Council (IOC) also has such corresponding testing requirements.
The review panel of sensory evaluation expressed that the taste of the olive oils were stale, sticky and that most samples are expired in 2016. The longer the storage time of an olive oil, the more defects of taste and appearance must occur. Hence the extra virgin name should be changed to "virgin olive oil" and for the lesser quality grades to "lampante olive oil."
The oils wine acidity and the smell of mud and other defects, may due to the fruit harvested too late, or improper handling of fruit produced in the production process. This kind of problem occurs when filling the oil, will not be worse as the storage time is longer.
In addition, Okeor also tested the oils for plasticizer substances, because such substances are fat-soluble and are likely to occur in foods containing the fat. Some products in this inspection only found trace amounts of plasticizing. However, Okoer also criticized the packagings as they found all the packaging materials contained polyvinyl chloride, polyvinylidene chloride or chloride, which are pollutants to the environment.
In Europe, Italian olive oil is a symbol of high quality, other olive oil sources often fake they are from Italy. In order to confirm if the 10 samples are really from the marked origins, Okeor used near-infrared spectroscopy techniques and molecular vibration analysis, the specific ingredients of oil were measured. Then, by comparison with a database of thousands of olive oil data, the oils origin can be determined. All 10 samples didn’t find matches in the database. Thereby bringing greater pressure on the validity of the labels.
Note that parts of the above information has been shared by others and whole report of Okoer can be accessed on www.Okoer.com
