Re: Food production

I'm horrified at what I've just seen/read. As a lover of both Parmesan and Parma ham (expensive enough outside Italy) and of the Italian slow food movement, I feel totally disillusioned!! Any reports on supposedly cold pressed extra virgin olive oil from Varese? I've just read an extract from Siete pazzi... I also buy Italian tinned tomatoes to make Bolognese sauce in the winter .... this is absolutely revolting.

Since I read that book I've been checking the labels for Non Ue production. It's worth paying the extra for biological products with 100percent Italiano labels where available.
According to this article https://www.internazionale.it/report...ro-cina-italia a million tons of tomato concentrate is imported into Italy from China every year, relabeled as Italian and sold to Africa.

Re: Production of 'passato'

Just checked a tin of peeled tomatoes in my cupboard - 'produced' in Italy, but provenance of tomatoes not indicated on tin. My motto from now on: buy locally grown fresh tomatoes in summer to make my own conserves of tomato sauce for winter with a few herbs/onions/garlic as natural "additives" - the only remaining risk being the olive oil! Having read all your posts, that's what I intend to do this summer with locally grown irish tomatoes, not as sun-kissed as those growing in continental Europe....but at least I'll know there's no child labour involved in production, and I'll know what I'm eating!!

Farmers in our village sell their olive oil for around Euro15 for a litre. And that is without any retailer involved. A farmers association from Trevi sells good oil but when you pay postage it gets quite expensive. The newly pressed oil that is available in November is well worth a trip to Umbria.
https://oliotrevi.it/en/negozio/oil/...ria-olive-oil/

Not had any dealings with the buying of oil for a while, but was surprised at the €15/Lt tag. Highest I've heard asked for here in Abruzzo was €10/Lt last year and I thought that was high compared to other years. Just wondered if it varies a lot in different regions? I don't personnaly think the price is high by the way as we would likely pay even more for good quality oil!

Are you certain that you bought a litre of oil Geordieborn? The farmers here normally put it in a 70cl bottle.

Yep Phil, price is always per litre here and we bought around 20 that we knew the source and quality. Someone was trying to sell the €10/Lt on the local forum last year. I've always thought the oil here was too cheap, perhaps it is!

Thank you Philat98 for the olive oil supplier's link. It might be worth making the trip.
Apparently olive oil too is being adulterated thanks to widespread agromafia activities. Imported olive oil from Italy and Spain failed purity tests in the US! There was a programme on this on CBS sixty minutes (It was mixed with other oils!). There's only one place to buy olive oil, at the local farmers' press of a small village!!

Another good place to visit is a farm at La Foce near Chiusi that has its own olive mill and produces oil from single varieties of olive. They let you taste the difference in the oils. They have a nice garden that was done by an American Iris Origo.
https://www.lafoce.com/en/home-page/olive-oil.html