Battle brews over imported olive oil
WASHINGTON — It’s a pressing matter for the tiny U.S. olive oil industry: American shoppers more often are going for European imports, which are cheaper and viewed as more authentic.
And that’s pitting U.S. producers against importers of the European oil, with some likening the battle to the California wine industry’s struggles to gain acceptance decades ago.
The tiny California olive industry says European olive oil filling U.S. shelves often is mislabeled and lower-grade oil, and they’re pushing the federal government to give more scrutiny to imported varieties. One congressman-farmer even goes so far as suggesting labels on imported oil say “extra rancid” rather than “extra virgin.”
Imposing stricter standards might help American producers grab more market share from the Europeans, who produce in bulk and now have 97 percent of the U.S. market.
Olive oil production is growing steadily. The domestic industry, with mostly high-end specialty brands, has gone from 1 percent of the national olive oil market five years ago to 3 percent today. Most of the production is in California.
Seeking to build on that, the domestic industry has mounted an aggressive push in Washington, holding olive oil tastings for members of Congress and lobbying them to put stricter standards on imports. The strategy almost worked last year when industry-proposed language became part of a massive farm bill passed out of the House Agriculture Committee.
The provision backed by California lawmakers would have allowed the Agriculture Department to extend mandatory quality controls for the domestic industry to imports. The bill’s language would have allowed government testing of domestic and imported olive oil to ensure that it was labeled correctly.
That testing, intended to prevent labeling lower-grade olive oil as “extra virgin” or fraudulently cutting in other types of oil, would be much more comprehensive than what imported oils are subjected to now.
But the language was stripped from the bill when it reached the House floor, an effort led by lawmakers from New York, where many of the country’s olive oil importers are based.
The floor fight broke down to one between East Coast and West Coast lawmakers. Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a farmer from Northern California, suggested that labels for imported oil should say “extra rancid.”
New York Republicans said new testing standards would cost importers millions of dollars. Republican Rep. Michael Grimm of Staten Island, N.Y., said his Greek-American and Italian-American constituents know good oil and haven’t had problems.
“It’s not rancid,” he said. “There is always going to be a problem in every industry, but this is nothing more than a multimillion-dollar earmark,” he added, using the term for special provisions that sometimes are inserted into legislation.
In the end, the final farm bill signed by President Barack Obama earlier this month was silent on olive oil.
But a nonbinding statement accompanying the bill encouraged the Agriculture Department, the U.S. Trade Representative and the Food and Drug Administration to “remove the obstacles that are preventing the U.S. olive oil industry from reaching its potential.”
