News has broken that millions of songbirds are being killed each year due to heavily industrialised olive picking practices in some Mediterranean countries. Intensive harvesting methods with tractors speeding through olives groves to strip olives from the trees have been sucking up many species of songbirds in the process. Reporting by the Telegraph and Independent newspapers has recently uncovered these practices and have suggested that olive oil found in major UK supermarkets may be coming from fruit harvested by these practices – see links below to full articles:
Telegraph Article
Independent Article
We are proud to tell you that all of the olives we harvest do not use these industrialised practices at all. All our olives are harvested by hand only so no species are disturbed or for that matter, killed. We take great care to gently comb the trees, so the olives can fall onto nets. They are then gathered by hand and filled into sacks for transporting to the mill.