Olive Products Must Meet Stringent Standards to be USDA Certified

Companies in the olive industry often are best able to achieve success by following guidelines and standards set by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

For example, there are certain standards for cans of ripe olives that the USDA has during inspections. USDA inspectors closely analyze cans of ripe olives to ensure that consumers get the same consistency of taste, freshness and quality, regardless of whether the olives are whole, sliced, wedged, pitted or chopped.

A big part of this consistency is AMS’s Section 8e requirement, which requires that all imports of olives and certain other products meet the same standards for size, quality, grade and maturity as olives grown within the United States must meet. This means that whether olives are grown in California, the Middle East or the Mediterranean region, there are standards in place to ensure that you get consistent quality. This serves both to provide a better customer experience and to level the playing field for olive growers within the United States.

There are also specific standards for olive oil as well. Often, lower-quality oils will market themselves as being “extra virgin olive oils” when they don’t actually meet the standards for being considered extra virgin. To be a true extra virgin olive oil, the oil should have no taste defects and achieve high scores in lab tests for chemical composition. These tests are performed by trained members of panels from the International Olive Council. There should be no use of chemicals or refinement during the production process. Finally, it should be prepared entirely by mechanical means at temperatures that will not cause any oil degradation (less than 86 degrees Fahrenheit is preferred).

People who take an interest in their olives can visit various olive oil industry sites to get recipes, cooking tips, videos and more, as well as research and information about olive production and marketing.

When you purchase oil and other products from My Olive Tree, you can be sure that you are getting extremely high quality for your purchase. Contact us to learn more about the processes that we use to ensure that quality.

 

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