THE Co-op has been mocked for a “meaningless” label on its bottles of own-brand olive oil, which has gone viral online.
The label contains just 31 words but devotes 11 of them either to “oil” or “olive”.
The resulting gibberish has been condemned by plain English campaigners and an image of the label has been liked and retweeted almost 50,000 times.
The bizarre label states: “Olive oil composed of refined olive oils and virgin olive oils. Oil comprising exclusively olive oils that have undergone refining and oils obtained directly from olives.”
The image was originally tweeted on Thursday by Daniel Whitear with the caption: “When you’re struggling to reach the word count whilst writing an essay.”
It has now been retweeted over 12,000 times and liked over 35,000 times.
Many Twitter users replied to the tweet mocking the label.
Simon Preece said: “What’s in this product? The label is unclear.”
Whilst Chris Yianni quipped: “Excellently excellent in an excellent way that typifies excellence and only excellence.”
Alec McQuay wrote: “Allergy information – MAY contain oil, olives, olive oil and oil derived from olives. Do not use if you are allergic to olives or oil.”
A spokesman for the Plain English Campaign said: “Predictably enough we found the label in question hilarious. The label explanation contains 31 words, at least 20-odd of which are redundant.
“Why not go with a nice picture of an olive or two? The word ‘olive’ or ‘olives’ appears five times, the word ‘oil’ or ‘oils’ six, for no reason other than to fill space. The end result is that The Co-Operative look a bit daft.
“Do they expect anyone to make sense of any of it? It’s largely meaningless. What do ‘comprising exclusively’, ‘undergone refining’ or ‘obtained directly’ actually mean?
“We’d guess nothing, and that someone was tasked with coming up with a load of nonsense to fill space.”
A spokeswoman for the Co-op said: “All retailers are obligated to make this statement on olive oil product labels in order to adhere to the olive oil regulations.
“Unlike other retailers, Co-op olive oil includes this messaging on the front label rather than the back, in order make it clear to the customer.”
