Recently released USITC report highlights central role of IOC in olive oil world

Madrid, Spain, 19 September 2013. The IOC Executive Secretariat had access to the U.S. International Trade Commission report, Olive Oil: Conditions of Competition between US and Major Foreign Supplier Industries (Investigation 332-537, USITC Publication 4419, August 2013), on 12 September.

In this report, the USITC has gone to great lengths to investigate the intricacies of the olive oil market. The IOC greatly applauds this endeavour and acknowledges the difficulty of such a task.

Numerous enquiries have been conducted in many countries and organisations cited in the report, which often have dissimilar and diverging interests. At times, the opinions and information reported may not be sufficiently objective, corroborated or consistent, but in no way does this detract from the efforts of the USITC; simply, on such occasions, opinions as opposed to facts are conveyed.

The IOC largely agrees with the market data reported, which are mostly drawn from the IOC balances. Likewise, it appreciates the acknowledgement of its role as a world olive oil forum and its position as an authority in areas such as olive products standardisation. It wishes to thank the authors of the report, who refer to the Organisation more than 300 times, and is ready to give any additional clarifications or data that might be needed. It reiterates that the Organisation is a neutral, intergovernmental institution which has always attended to the needs of all countries, whether they are member or non-member, producing or consuming.

As an organisation whose membership accounts for 97% of world olive oil production, the IOC considers cooperation among all countries and the alignment and fulfilment of standards to be of key importance in the drive to enhance the quality and authenticity of the olive oils sold across the globe and to facilitate trading by precluding unfair competition. Last but not least, it extends a further invitation to all the producer countries – and all the consumer countries in the not too distant future – to join the membership of the Organisation, so following in the footsteps of Uruguay, the latest New World addition to the IOC.