Yes, I am being driven mad by what should be the simplest of exercises – labelling our extra virgin olive oil.
Not so simple with the multitude of reviews, cessations and new rules which are happening with no coordination and little consideration of the producer’s bottom line.
Our olive oil is certified organic, so we have those rules to abide by – submitting our label for approval. AQIS have decided, for reasons best known to themselves, to withdraw the use of their seal so that has to come off our label and we are told that we have to have the IFOAM logo on the label now. Then the OFA are developing a national organic mark which will have to go on the label – they haven’t decided on the symbol yet. Seems like a lot of free advertising on our labels.
Oh yes, AQIS is conducting a review of organic legislation and may be introducing another mandatory regulatory mark for export. Soon there will be so many ‘marks’ on the label there will be little room for anything else.
Wondering what all the acronyms stand for – I am not going to bore you by spelling so many out. So many organisations with a finger in the organic pie.
Now there is the Australian and New Zealand Government’s Food labelling review which is about to report its findings, presumably to be enacted within the year forcing more changes to olive oil labels. These are expected to be more about health claims and nutrition panels – so there goes the back label for redesign.
Then according to the draft of the proposed Australian standards for olive and olive-pomace oils being orchestrated by the AOA and Standards Australia we are going to be expressly forbidden – yes forbidden – to describe our olive as olive oil on the label (12.3.2.2. ……..Any other designations (e.g. Olive Oil,…………) are expressly forbidden).
Seriously – they can’t be serious. Added to that there are more rules about what we can use to describe the taste of the oil, whether it was pressed or extracted, hot or cold, first, second or last etc, etc, etc
For export we will still be required to abide by the International Olive Council (IOC) Trade Standard for Olive Oil and Olive Pomace Oils. They differ from the proposed Australian Standard so here comes another label.
We have to have a label designed now for the coming season to replace the perfectly good one we have (we still have a few thousand left) which has been made obsolete by decisions by anonymous committees in far away places. And with all the rule changes in the pipeline the new label will probably be obsolete before it is printed.
For goodness sake, we are just trying to sell olive oil – organic extra virgin olive oil - and make some money out of it. The latter is increasingly hard to achieve with so much time and resources wasted in abiding by these ever changing rules made by those whose product is rules and more rules.
