I heard just because of this one little study,CA & other american EVOOs should be bought.
I think it was a pointless study to try & convince americans to get rid of imported EVOOs & only buy american.
It wasn't pointless. In fact, the first thing you report in publishing a study is "the point" of it. The authors were very up front about the motivation for the work. The first line of the Introduction was:
While there are many excellent imported and domestic extra virgin olive oils available in California, our findings indicate that the quality level of the largest imported brand names is inconsistent at best, and that most of the topselling olive oils we examined regularly failed to meet international standards for extra virgin olive oil.
And it is indeed within the mission of the UC Davis Olive Center to promote California olive oils. The fact that the study suggests that popular European EVOO's are more likely to fail to meet international standards is really no surprise. The best-selling brands deal in large quantities. Something that cuts cost by a tiny fraction generates a large increase in profit if the quantities are large enough. (If you work out a way to save 1/100-cent on each gallon of Coke syrup, you save the company just a little less than $20-million a year.) And working with large quantities both makes it more likely that substandard oil will make it into the production chain, and those issues represent cheaper costs, wither intentional or as simply a fact when the bottler's bulk buyers are shopping price, too.
It is difficult to say from the results of testing if failures are more due to adulteration with refined oil or more due to spoiled oil. The indicators are much the same. I am more inclined to suspect it's spoiled oil. EVOO is a commodity, and the price fluctuates by as much as 4% a month, so the is likely some holding and speculation. But for this situation to exist, there must be a very large olive oil industry, as there is in Europe. These problems are far less likely to exist in California or other U.S. OO producing regions. They can quickly sell all they can produce. With any sort of reasonable handling, it doesn't have time to spoil. And the growing operations are so small, relative to the vast combined growing operations in Europe, so there are no questionable crops being fed into co-ops.
I have no doubt that had the more artisanal European grower brands, generally too small to be exported much, be tested, they would be similar to the California brands in the terms of the study. What we take from the study is something that should be of no surprise at all. Whenever a food commodity is of high value, and there is an opportunity to use poorer quality product or to deliberately adulterate the product, it will happen. Orange juice concentrate is another classic case, a far more sinister one.
And plain sense should tell us that there is a limit to the cost saving that can be realized by large scale, especially when import costs are added. If I buy Pompeian EVOO, I assume the much lower cost carries with it some compromises, and indeed I can taste that compromise. The problem is, as you ask, that it's not really possible for evaluate an oil in a sealed bottle. But if I want pure, fresh EVOO, and don't have specific inside information about a company's practices, my best chance is with domestic grower brands. But we can, most of us, tell the difference between cheap EVOO's and the more reliable and more expensive brands. Luncini came out well in the tests. Colavita did not, but I do like their Frutata EVOO, their expensive oil, and therefore probably less adulterated and more carefully produced.
And I don't doubt that if we had U.S. production anything like Europe's, we would see similar quality issues. The Davis Center could have argued exactly these points strictly from business logic and a knowledge of the olive oil industry, and it would make sense, but an analytical basis was far more credible.
And I don't discount the fact that the very large exporters likely shoot for a rather bland flavor, trying to please, or at least not displease, everyone, which is definitely not the road to best flavor. That might well have some effect on professional tasters. It does on me, and I'm far from their level.
And I should here link to the report, if someone's wondering what we're talking about.
http://static.oliveoiltimes.com/library/uc-davis-report.pdf
