In September, the IOC Executive Secretariat held a number of meetings with its diplomatic contacts from producer countries, namely from Argentina, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya.
On the invitation of the Italian Ministry of Agricultural Policy and of the Italian sectoral consortium (CO.FI.OL), the Executive Director participated in the eleventh edition of L’Isola del Tesolio event on 23 September in Palermo (Italy).
The chemistry experts of the IOC met on 25 and 26 September at the IOC headquarters to examine the state of progress of the most recent studies on the methods of analysis of olive oil and olive pomace oil.
On 28 September, the Executive Secretariat of the IOC received notification from the United Nations in New York that the Argentine Republic had notified its provisional application of the International Agreement on Olive Oil and Table Olives, 2015.
Also on 28 September, the Deputy Executive Director for technical, economic and promotion matters, Jaime Lillo, participated in the inauguration of the Master’s in Olive Growing and Olive Oil Technology of the University of Cordoba (Spain). Four students have been awarded an IOC scholarship for this university year.
The senior officials of the IOC, together with the heads of promotion and olive oil chemistry units received a delegation of some 20 Chinese officials from agricultural and environmental bodies with an interest in olive oil and the trade standard applying to olive oils and olive-pomace oils.
On 29 September, the Executive Secretariat also held the 8th meeting of the IOC Statistics Working Group. The purpose of this meeting was to prepare the olive oil and table olive balances to be presented at the session of the Council of Members and to discuss the current figures on olive growing, olive production and olive growing area, expansion plans, problems in the sector and the reasons for the increase or decrease of production/consumption in each country.
On 2 October, the Executive Director participated in the inauguration of the University Experts Course in Virgin Olive Oil Tasting at the University of Jaén (Spain) for which the IOC had awarded ten scholarships.
The Executive Secretariat decided to postpone the seminar on Xylella fastidiosa until the first quarter of 2018. This had initially been scheduled to take place on 2 and 3 October but owing to the organisation of simultaneous events on the same subject, namely the international symposium on 28 September, organised by the Conselleria Valenciana de Agricultura (the regional department of agriculture) in Valencia (Spain), and the conference organised on 13 and 15 November in Palma de Mallorca by the European Food and Safety Authority (EFSA), the University of the Balearic Islands, the Euphresco network, the POnTE and XF-ACTORS projects of the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union and the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission. The Executive Secretariat will be present at this conference, seeking to establish links with other international institutions in order to take stock of the challenge posed by this bacterium.
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