Buy Local

Posted on April 29th, 2008 by Phil.
Categories: Food & Wine, Consumer Products, Philanthropy & Environment.

Reading Myk’s dinner party tips got me thinking about cooking. When I think about cooking for dinner parties, I usually think about Italian food. When I think about Italian food, I think about olive oil. My family produces olive oil, so I get a lot of info on the state of that market. My father sent me a very interesting article today, and that puts into very clear terms something that we’ve all known about and been irked by for ages - that fact that so called “Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil”, is usually nothing of the sort, and unsuspecting consumers are getting duped. Beyond the fact that much of it is not extra virgin, much of it is not even Italian.

The public is starting to become aware of this due to a lot of recent police activity in Italy. This week 40 people were arrested and more than 25,000 liters of suspect olive oil was seized. The olive oil crackdown was the second in less than six weeks. A similar operation occurred in mid-March, when 23 people were arrested in a $100,000,000 raid. Police had been watching some of the olive oil operations in question for more than two years. The suspects are accused of adding chlorophyll to sunflower and soya bean oil and selling it as extra virgin olive oil in Italy and abroad. TV news footage showed police scientists demonstrating the process and the cheap oil turning a darker, greenish color, like that of the traditional extra virgin olive oil. The authorities said they had recently blocked “huge” shipments of the doctored oil to the United States and Germany.

In less dramatic cases, the police have also taken action against dozens of olive oil producers in Italy that have for years been selling their olive oil as “Made in Italy”, but in fact using olive oil pressed and shipped in from north Africa and parts of eastern Europe. It was estimated by some that the bulk of olive oil being exported from Italy was either not made from olives grown in the country, not made from olives period, or at the very least, not extra virgin. (Extra virgin is a measure of acidity. True extra virgin olive oil should be 0.75-1.0% acidity or less.)

The string of olive oil arrests came only a month after scares over mozzarella production and adulterated wine caused demand for a whole host of Italian food goods to plummet. In my view, this is all the more reason to buy locally grown and produced goods, especially when it comes to food. Beyond the lack of guaranteed quality and myriad possibilities for everything from simple mistakes to dangerous mistakes (China) to bold faced fraud, there are compelling arguments from the perspective of environmental responsibility. Follow this chain for examples: Olives are grown and pressed in Tunisia, packaged for shipment, trucked to a local port, shipped to Italy, bottled and labeled, re-packed for shipment, shipped to the east coast of the US, trucked to another state in the US, placed in a warehouse, and finally trucked to a local store. The amount of oil (gas) used to get that bottle on a shelf is staggering, let alone the waste of packing materials and time. And for what? To get lower quality and a questionable product. Why not support a local grower, the local economy, the national economy, your own health, and the health of the planet.

Share this

0 comments.