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<pre>Bravo Steve. It is good to have a robust debate. Unfortunately so
many people work for large institutions and their utterances are
censored by the PR gang to whom praise not debate is the name of the
game.

I had realised that California was mainly table olives but I never
realised that it was 99.9%. Does that mean that virtually all the olive
oil is from reject table olives?

The other problem is the use that the manual has been put to in
Australia. Obviously you have no control over that. Talking to a few
growers who have been over here in Italy there seems to me a strange
view in circulation. In spite of many growers having a background in
grapes and a clear idea of the distinction between wine grapes, dried
grapes and table grape they seem to be confused about olives and seem to
have more of a milk model in their minds where the milk goes to the
factory who then turns it into cheese, butter, yoghurt etc. If they
have this model in their minds it is not surprising that they have
picked up the Californian manual and thought it was "one size fits all"
solution to their lack of technical backup.

I look forward to the new edition of the manual.

Cheers Brian Chatterton


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