photo of oil and olives

olive oil

It takes about 4 to 6 kilograms of olives to produce 1 liter of olive oil. A tree produces 15 to 50 kilograms of olives each year, with great year-to-year variation. One hundred to 250 trees can be grown on a hectare.

The International Olive Oil Council adopted standards at a meeting on 6 June 1996, and these have been followed in Europe and Australia.

Grade			Maximum free oleic acid	Organoleptic test	Comments
virgin olive oil	suitable for human consumption	extra virgin	≤1%	≥6.5	produced by a mechanical process. No additives.
		fine virgin	≤2%	≥5.5
		virgin	≤3.3%	≥3.5
	lampante virgin olive oil		>3.3%	<3.5
refined olive oil			≤0.3		Olive oil produced in the manner of virgin olive oil, but which had acid or taste/smell characteristics that kept it from qualifying as virgin olive oil, and was subsequently processed to remove those faults. Alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) may be added.
olive oil					mix of refined and virgin oils
olive-pomace oil	crude olive-pomace oil
	refined olive-pomace oil		≤0.3		extracted from pomace with solvents
	olive pomace oil		mix of crude and refined oils

The United States standards date from 2 March 1948 and are much less sophisticated than those adopted by the IOOC. There are four grades, “Grade A, U.S. Fancy,” “Grade B, U.S. Choice,” “Grade C, U.S. Standard” and “Grade D, substandard.” The maximum “free fatty acid content, calculated as oleic,” is 1.4%, 2.5% and 3% respectively. In 2004 American growers were agitating to adopt stricter European standards.

resources

Codex Alimentarius Standard 33-1981 (Revised 1-1989)

http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/olive/doc/Cxs_033e.pdf

European Union Standard

http://r0.unctad.org/infocomm/anglais/olive/doc/UE2568_91_a1.pdf

International Agreement on Olive Oil and Table Olives, 2005

www.unctad.org/en/docs/tdoliveoil10d6_en.pdf See the Annex.

The website of the North American Olive Oil Assn. provides, among other information, guidelines on substituting olive oil for other oils:

http://aboutoliveoil.org/aboutoliveoil/ver2/index.php?id=1

The United States standards may be seen at www.ams.usda.gov/standards/oliveoil.pdf

Rafeal Frankel, Shmuel Avitsur and Etan Ayalon.
History and Technology of Olive Oil in the Holy Land.
Jay C. Jacobson, translator.
Arlington, VA: Oléarius Editions (P.O. Box 906, Arlington, VA 22216)