FADTS ABOUT OLIVE OIL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 121, 14 July 1911, Page 2

FADTS ABOUT OLIVE OIL.

Ohvc oil is made from the ripe fruit. In Spain and France,; - men and girls are employed to go over the orchard ground daily pud pick- up tiio fallen ripe fruit’ for this purpose. The rotten and semi-ripe olives are rejected. In Algeria, Sicily, and other countries where the olive is chiefly used for homo consumption, little or no care is taken in the selection of fruit for oil-making. ■■ In the countries first-named, however, it has been found that only the choicest oil is saleable in the foreign markets, and hence the care taken in its preparation. Like all other good things of general use, olive oil has its host of mere or less base imitators. Cottou-scid oil is the cliiofest of these. An “oil ' that is the product of the chemist’s laboratory is another. Mixtures of olive, cotton-seed and nut oils, known to the trade as “sophisticated” oil, a.re sold as the pure article. The “salad oil” of the grocer is almost invariably the oil of the cotton-seed. Lnfoitunatcly, the real olive oil is comparatively high priced. This is due to the high tariff on the imported article in the first place, and the limited outputs of the Californian orchards in the second. In 1908, California produced 350,000 gallons of oil. tint in tiie same year there were impelled 3,149,517 gallons. There is, therefore, little hope of the oil becoming cheaper through the medium ot the Pacific slope trees until some tunc has elapsed. The consensus of opinion seems to be that it California desires to make it;-: olive industry a paying proposition. it should attempt to do so 1 ".rough the medium of its ripe olives and its oil.