Shawn's Blog — Regulation

I have been following, at some remove, the steady flow of lawsuits in the olive oil industry, not in small part through The Olive Oil Times but also through other media. It is really a staggering lineup including so many of the giants like Deoleo, Filippo Berio, Safeway Inc., Capatriti (Kangadis), and the most recent additions to the list, J.M. Smucker Co./Transnational Foods Inc. Something that caught my attention in these costly mudslinging exercises, however, were some of the statements made by Deoleo CEO Pierluigi Tosato as reported in Just-Food (7/13/18) and The Olive Oil Times (7/11/18). Mr. Tosato makes...

When I got into this business I had visions of sunset strolls through the orchard on warm summer evenings and enjoying a glass of wine or dining al fresco with a beautiful view over the orchard. It never occurred to me that as an added bonus I'd become a connoisseur of regulatory inspections. I referenced regulation in an earlier post and some of the numerous regulatory agencies and paperwork we have to deal with. Apparently that was a harbinger of things to come as 3 days later, we got a surprise inspection from the F.D.A., which is a somewhat infrequent...

One of the basic principals of The Olive Oil Source is flexibility. We feel that the best service we can offer to our customers is to provide them with what they need and not require nor limit them to purchase everything from us. If they have a specific bottle they want to use that we don't carry or want to label bottles themselves, fine. If for example, they have a direct tie to an E.V.O.O. (or anything else) producer in another country and want to augment those products with ones we have, that's fine. There's no reason they shouldn't be...