Olive oil: more harm than good?

Is our love for olive oil harming Britain's favourite birds?

The market for new foods to make oils out of continues to grow and is showing no signs of slowing down. Coconut oil had it's moment in the spotlight and now new options are popping up on supermarket shelves, such as pumpkin seed oil and rice bran oil (don't worry, I've never  heard of it either). But one oil that has established itself as a staple in our diets is the humble olive oil. From 1990/91 to 2015/16, consumption of olive oil increased by 763%, according to the Olive Oil Times.

However, and you've guessed it- there's a pretty upsetting consequence for using this heart-healthy fat. Olives are often harvested nocturnally because cooler temperatures help to preserve the olives natural flavour. Sounds pretty harmless, right? But birds from central and northern Europe, including well-loved British birds such as robins, settle down to rest in olive bushes during migration in the winter. So when the intensive farming machines start working at night, unfortunately it's not just olives that can get sucked up.

Now you might be thinking 'birds have wings, so why don't they just fly off?' But the bright lights from the machines dazzle and confuse the sleeping birds, meaning they don't have time to fly away before harvesting begins. Research carried out by the Portuguese Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests found that in Andalusia alone, around 2.6 million birds are killed during harvest every year. Other countries with mass olive-harvesting use similar methods, but records of the bird deaths are not kept.

It's not all bad news however. When the truth behind olive harvesting hit the news last summer, many supermarkets were forced to prove whether the olive oil they source uses these practices. Ethical Consumer created a table which shows that supermarkets like Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury's own brands of olive oil are bird-friendly, so check it out here to see which shop is best to buy it from.

Swapping to a trusted olive oil brand is great, but we need nocturnal harvesting to be made illegal if we want to save as many birds as we can. The Andalusian government have put a stop to the practice, but countries such as France and Italy are yet to do the same. We need the EU to put a ban on it altogether, so add your name to this petition if you want to help make a great change. But what else can we do in the mean time? Raising awareness about the sad truth behind nocturnal olive harvesting is key, so share the facts with others to help get the word out. Otherwise, we might not have some of the most loved British birds brightening our skies for much longer.

Next week- is soya causing deforestation?