
Birds are being vacuumed up as part of olive harvesting in the Mediterranean - Breadmaker
https://www.birdguides.com/news/millions-of-birds-vacuumed-to-death-annually-in-mediterranean/
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chicob
I'm an olive producer in Portugal.

I suspect the main reason behind the need for harvesting at night is that the
demand exceeds the supply for super high density harvesting service, and
contractors harvest day and night in order to face the demand.

As soon as there are enough providers, working extra hours will become less
interesting and this kind of practice will go away. This kind of harvesting is
a lot quicker than previous practices, so harvesting during the day will be
more than enough.

Harvesting is done usually in the winter (ranging from November to January) so
only non-migratory birds are afected, and even then only those nesting in
super high density orchards.

The harvesters are quite expensive, and usually only larger producers own
them. This kind of investment is tricky, because for the most part of the year
there is nothing to harvest (although there are some other crops where the
harvesters are being tried in order to recover the investment more quickly).

Of course no farmer wants to needlessly kill harmless birds, but I will wait
for more data, since there has been some hype regarding super high density
orchards in the past months, usually portraying them as something horrible and
bad to the environment.

By the way, birds to not get into the oil presses, because olives pass through
a mesh in order to remove branches and leaves. Then they're washed, so there
is no risk of contamination with dead birds.

I also suspect the decline of bird populations in the south has something to
do with the big fires of past years, that forced northern predatory birds to
come searching for food at lower latitudes. I have never seen so many eagles
like this year.

Or the other side, the Eurasian magpie populations seem to be doing fine, as
well as the once endangered storks.

Edit to add: the research cited in the article is not research but an
information notice by the Environment Council of the government of Andalucia.

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teh_klev
> I suspect the main reason behind the need for harvesting at night is that
> the demand exceeds the supply

The third paragraph of the article suggests otherwise:

 _The trees are stripped at night because cool temperatures help preserve the
olives ' aromatic compounds._

> so only non-migratory birds are afected[sic]

Again, the article begs to differ, these are migratory birds:

 _Huge numbers of birds from central and northern Europe winter in the
Mediterranean_

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chicob
_The trees are stripped at night because cool temperatures help preserve the
olives ' aromatic compounds._

I don't think that is why they do it. First of all, producers are paid
according to the titratable acidity of the oil (and classified as extra
virgin, virgin, or lampante) and if paid by the tonne of olives delivered,
this is adjusted to the oil-to-mass ratio (roughly 20% w/w). These values are
determined in laboratory, from samples collected at delivery, and whose
results come only at a later time. There is no measure for aroma.

Many times, batches from different producers are mixed before pressing, so
there's no point in trying to preserve whatever aromas there might be.

Unless we're talking about producers with their own pressers, producing their
own label, trying to preserve aroma is kind of pointless, and subjective at
best.

But there is something else: the oil-to-mass ratio improves during dryer
weeks, so transportation is cheaper and extraction is better paid. So maybe
there is more pressure for a quick harvest in conditions where the oil content
reaches 22%, but again I see no point in nightly harvest.

 _Huge numbers of birds from central and northern Europe winter in the
Mediterranean_

But they are not being affected, that is, of all the 17 species mentioned in
the cited notice, only one is listed as Near Threatened (the redwing, T.
iliacus). Vulnerable or endangered species are not being affected as far as I
know, and sedentary/endemic species would be in greater danger.

According to the Portuguese Natural Preservation Institute (ICNF) the numbers
involved are not statistically relevant for justifying the prohibition of
nightly harvests.

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ak39
This article and the pics of the dead birds broke my heart. :-(

I can’t understand any human not pausing to think twice and to find
alternatives when faced with such horrendous death of innocent creatures. Yeah
it’s cheap and efficient but it kills millions of birds. Find another way! I
don’t want your fancy olives if you don’t care about what you’re doing to the
birds.

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leetcrew
I'm curious whether you feel the same way about windows, which kill _hundreds_
of millions of birds each year. [0]

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/stop-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/stop-
blaming-cats-as-many-as-988-million-birds-die-annually-in-window-
collisions/2014/02/03/9837fe80-8866-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html)

~~~
tomatotomato37
Also don't forget about wind turbines. Those result in some magnitude of
thousands of bird kills (why is this such a contested figure‽) but are still
necessary if we don't want to start rationing out electricity.

Edit: Wrong reply chain

~~~
jyounker
The figure is disputed because it depends upon the kind of wind turbines. Old
wind turbines were much smaller, they had more blades, and they turned much
faster. My understanding is that this led to many more bird deaths.

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aij
So, the main problem is that they are harvesting at night, when the birds are
going to be super docile. Birds really don't like to move during their resting
period. (I can confirm, at least for chickens. Even super skittish chickens
will let you grab/handle them at night, with little more than some clucks of
protest.)

Other than not running the harvesters at night, I'm not sure what they could
do about it. Even if they light up the whole grove as bright as day, I'd
expect circadian rhythms to kick in eventually, though it might be enough to
harvest first.

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megous
So are we eating olives mixed with dead birds remains? It has to be impossible
to clean up completely, no?

~~~
emerongi
They sieve, blow and wash any foreign bodies out.

~~~
threeseed
Be curious to know how they wash it.

Because having olives lying next to dead birds sure sounds like a disease
risk.

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Mediterraneo10
Olives have to be cured in e.g. lye to become edible. Wouldn’t that kill off
pathogens?

~~~
pvaldes
Not to mention the salt

Curing olives implies to wash the raw fruit in saltwater and spices and
discard the water after some hours or days. The procedure is redone as times
as necessary to ged rid of the sour flavour. You can not eat it raw and green,
they taste horrible.

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MartinMond
Can the process be slowed down, so that the birds are first woken up and given
time to escape before the vacuuming starts?

~~~
raverbashing
I think something like this would work, or maybe trees should be "pre-
shaken"/"pre-illuminated" to allow the birds to fly off

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turrini
Would not it be the case to implement a way to scare birds with ultrasonic
tools? Attach them to harvesters. There are ultrasonic tools that scare away
dogs, there must be one for birds.

~~~
aij
I'm not sure how adding more noise would help if "The loud noise and dazzling
illumination of the lights is thought to disorientate the birds" according to
the article.

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jdmoreira
I’m from this area of Portugal and one day I realized there were way fewer
sparrows than I remembered. I wonder if this is the cause

~~~
icebraining
I have to say, I'm kinda surprised our farmers can afford such machinery. I
thought we mostly used gas-powered or electric tree shakers ("varejadores").

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susanagonzaga
Greece is where olive was born. Today, Greeks harvest olives during the day
and by hand. This is the natural way. Vaccuming olives at night for a slightly
different taste in olive oil and killing so many birds which are members of
our community does not make commonsense. I am Portuguese and if this tragedy
does not stop by October 2019 rest assured that I will buy Greek only olive
oil for a long time.

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crsmithdev
Had to read about this from another source, the cookies popup can't be
dismissed and even when deleted from the DOM, the story is still unreadable.

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chicob
On Firefox, open

    
    
      about:reader?url=https://www.birdguides.com/news/millions-of-birds-vacuumed-to-death-annually-in-mediterranean/
    

It won't show the comments, but at least you can read it.

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projektfu
Does this make olives non-vegan since it’s now known that harvesting them
kills animals?

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ThrowawayR2
If so, then nothing but greenhouse grown plants are vegan. Millions of rodents
and rabbits are killed each year (not really an exaggeration, they reproduce
prolifically) using a variety of methods to prevent them from damaging crops.

One amusing example is removal of burrowing animals with FAEs; propane and
oxygen is injected into a burrow and detonated. (Google for "rodent blaster"
if you're curious.) It does have the advantage of being an entirely organic
method of agricultural pest control.

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ip26
Wonder if this will come back to bite them. Birds can be a form of free pest
management.

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BasDirks
What kind of species are affected?

~~~
smackay
The photo in the article shows three Song Thrushes (Turdus philomelos) (the
larger ones); the smaller one in the middle of the picture is most likely a
Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita). The small bird, the in background, next
to one of the Song Thrushes appears to be a Serin (Serinus serinus). All are
typical of Olive groves in winter.

The first two species are migrants from northern Europe. These successfully
survived the Autumn migration so this has a more severe impact on their
populations in general.

~~~
BasDirks
Are these in any way endangered?

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freebear
If you eat our food, if you compete with our food, or if you live close to our
food: we will kill you.

~~~
vixen99
Or if you simply exist, we'll also kill you in our factory farms.

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sethammons
Consider that a cow or other animal raised for slaughter would not have
otherwise existed. Is it better to never have existed, or to live and be
harvested? As for the factory part, I live in cattle country in Montana. I see
acres of open spaces, and cows frolicking and enjoying themselves. They don't
have to be packed shoulder to shoulder in crates their whole life.

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kranner
I think the terror of understanding that your companions are disappearing day
by day and any day now your number will be up combined with the final moments
until execution probably exceed the fun of running about in fields. We may
have no way to know. But then we have no right to assume this isn’t the case.

~~~
sethammons
Consider this exact situation, as you described it (edit: minor change, sub
execution for some other death), plays out for aging humans. Dying is usually
not pleasant and it happens to us all.

~~~
chongli
Yes, and many people don't get the quick death of a captive-bolt pistol to the
forehead. Many people die in a hospital after years of suffering from gradual
organ failure, dementia, cancer, or other terminal diseases.

Besides that, I don't think we know if cattle are aware that when their
herdmates disappear that they are dying. Herd animals in the wild such as
zebras and wildebeest witness their herdmates being killed by predatory cats
on a daily basis, something I think would be far more traumatizing than just
having them disappear on a truck. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

