Balzano del 35% in value of Made in Puglia olive oil exports in the world despite climate change weighing on regional production and the threats of the traffic light nutrition label on food that is spreading across Europe. This is what emerges atanalysis by Coldiretti Puglia, relating to the boom in foreign sales of Apulian extra virgin olive oil in the first 3 months of 2023, a confirmation of positive performance which had already closed 2022 with a growth of 30,4%.
"Spreading the culture of extra virgin olive oil among tourists and consumers and supporting the continuous growth of the oil supply chain in Italy and abroad are our goals because consumers are hungry for information and knowledge about the world of oil" commented Savino Muraglia, president of Coldiretti Puglia (in the picture) which recalls how the olive tree in Puglia is present on over 370 thousand hectares "with Apulian olive growing being the largest green factory in Southern Italy with 60 million olive trees, 40% of the surface of the South, almost 32% nationally and a production value of one billion euros”.
A success threatened - says Coldiretti - by the difficulties caused by the war and by energy price increases with the growing production costs that are not covered by the sales prices, but also by the alarmist traffic light stamps that some countries, from Great Britain to Chile to France , are applying to different foods of the Mediterranean diet on the basis of fat, sugar or salt content.
I nutriscore and traffic light labeling systems – according to Coldiretti – they are misleading, discriminatory and incomplete and they end up paradoxically excluding from the diet healthy and natural foods that have been present on tables for centuries to favor artificial products whose recipe is not even known in some cases.
In this scenario further tightening of controls is needed, to stop the unfair practices that unload the costs of commercial promotions onto the weakest link in the supply chain, thanks to the Law strongly requested by Coldiretti to make the distribution of value along the supply chain more equitable and prevent the current massive use of promotional offers from a part of the large-scale distribution is not passed on to production companies already forced to suffer the increase in production costs.
