Arriving at a supermarket shelf and seeing olive oil can instantly make us think that we are dealing with a 100% quality product. made in Spain. Also that we see in our butcher shop Iberian pork cuts at prices that, at most, point to 30 or 45 euros per kilo.
However, it is the trap of the labeled that excites the best producers of these two products, flag of our gastronomy. On the one hand, to the producers of extra virgin olive oil. On the other, to those who offer 100% Iberian acorn-fed pork for fresh consumption.
A drama that is easy to summarize: why do those companies that make the best products have to give names to their products? Why do the ‘competitors’ who make a lower quality product Can they also use a nomenclature that, however, does not require surnames but does oblige the consumer to have more knowledge about a product that they should not necessarily have?
In the case of oil, it explains it. Bego Gonzalez Pastor, oil mill master in Olivares de Altomira, a small olive production in the Cuenca town of Cuenca. “What we see as olive oil in a supermarket is not olive oil, but a refined that is made with the lamp oil and with the residuesthe pomace, produced by the mills”.
“It’s a whole series of chemical processes of heating and distillation. It doesn’t have nothing to do with the production of extra virgin olive oil. However, I have to put Extra Virgin on the label and pretend that the customer knows it, while a conventional oil producer can easily say that it is ‘olive oil’. It is not fair because the authentic olive oil is extra virgin “, he laments.
This standard that allows labeling complicates, mainly, the final consumer who finds olive oil at a lower price, while extra virgin olive oil (due to its production and labor) is more expensive. “Those who do the wrong things have been allowed to have the same name, since years ago they were allowed to remove the word ‘refined’ from the labels,” he recalls.
A reality that also happens with the Iberian pig, both in its fresh consumption and in its consumption in sausages or cured meats. he tells it like this Francisco AsparagusCEO of the company Señorío de Montanera from Extremadura, leader in the marketing and exploitation of 100% Iberian acorn-fed pork in Extremadura.
“Anyone can put in a letter or in a supermarket that it is about iberico pig when they are selling fresh pork. The problem is that this Iberian pig is usually field bait, while I, who make 100% Iberian acorn-fed pork, have to do all the strings”, he comments.
“It’s not fair because the one who makes Iberian pork is really me, no those who are putting cross pigs or those who are feeding Iberian pigs with feed or put in stables”, he warns. A reality that is palliated, in certain circumstances, with ham, since the quality standard for Iberian ham establishes a color system that goes from white (ham to with less purity and where the pig does not eat acorns) to black (where the pig is 100% Iberian and spends its final phase in a montanera eating acorns), with green and red as intermediate steps.
“You are going to arrive at a restaurant and the innkeeper It does not have to explain the type of Iberian meat that serves and will leave only Iberian secret or Iberian lizard. The same thing that happens in a supermarket, where there is no obligation to explain the type of pig from which the meat comes,” he insists.
Harvest November 2021-Olivares de Altomira Extra Virgin Olive Oil 3l – ECOLOGICAL EVOO- First cold pressing – Rich in Biophenols – Rich in Oleocanthal
“What is not fair, above all, is that the one who it makes a worse product, it can say that it is an Iberian pigwhile I, who really make an Iberian pig with all the letters, have to put the 100% acorn-fed Iberian pig tag because that confuses the consumer, especially when they see the price differences,” he adds.
Images
In DAP | They got tired of selling the Iberian pig to the big brands and now they are the largest producer of 100% Iberian acorn-fed ham in Extremadura
In DAP | New regulations for Iberian ham