Get ready to go beyond the label as Katy Keiffer explores the world of olive oil on a new episode of What Doesn’t Kill You. How has California emerged as an olive region? How can you spot fraudulent olive oil? Guest Dan Flynn, Executive Director of UC Davis Olive Center, helps listeners answer these questions. Dan served as a consultant to the California State Legislature from 1985 to 2004 in a variety of policy areas and is the former owner and manager of an organic farm in the Sierra foothills. Dan received a B.A. in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a M.A in Political Science from Rutgers University. This program was brought to you by Bonnie Plants.

“We’re trying to do for olives what UC Davis did for wine.” [01:00]

“What we’ve found when we analyzed olive oil is that a lot of oil available to consumers here in the US is not meeting the standards of extra virgin. From our view point, there needs to be better methods to analyze quality and the existing standards need to be tightened up.” [09:00]

“Olive oil is a fruit juice so freshness is important! One way to determine freshness is the harvest date. In our experience, if a producer cares enough to put a harvest date on the product they usually care about the oil.” [29:00]

–Dan Flynn on What Doesn’t Kill You