Talk, talk. Jaw, jaw.

It's fun to do the talk talk and the jaw jaw, as a bunch of speakers did recently at the splendid Eurotoques open day and food fair at the Brook Lodge Inn in Macreddin, County Wicklow. Dr Pat Wall of the Food Safety Authority was witty, EU Commissioner David Byrne was positive and forthright, bio-dynamic farmer Penny Lange was inspiring, Dr Uwe Hilde was calm and commonsensical, and John McKenna of the Megabytes parish did the sort of thing he always does.

Then, having set the world to rights, and having been assured that artisan producers would get the protection they need to be able to continue, we did more chit-chat and how-are-yous and ate the splendid food and drank the organic Bonterra wines, and went home happy.

And then: a dose of reality.

A letter from the wonderful Treasa de Barra, producer of the utterly wonderful and utterly unique Bonina black pudding, one of County Clare's icon foods. And what is happening with Treasa? She has ceased production of her magnificent food, that's what. Treasa used fresh blood from a local, approved, abattoir. Then she was told she could no longer use this source, and that "only a huge investment in new equipment by the abattoir would permit the blood being used by us. As the financial return to the abattoir is negligible, this course is out of the question. The only alternative open to us, it seems, was to resort to the use of dried blood, but, rather than compromise the quality of our product, I have chosen to cease production altogether".

So, that's what the talk talk and the jaw jaw gets you. Damn all. Another specialist squeezed out of existence because a local authority hasn't the wit to understand that they can always make an exception for traditional methods of production. Commissioner Byrne assured the Eurotoques meeting that such exceptions are possible, and will always be possible. They just aren't listening in County Clare, are they? And so a producer and a specialist food, which food lovers hunted down when travelling in the county, is no more.

What on earth is the point of the talk talk and the jaw jaw? The EHO's and the FSA aren't listening to anyone.

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