Agri-Business or Agri-Culture?

IF, and it's a very large, ominous, cloudy, troublesome IF, we can get through the foot and mouth crisis relatively unscathed, then we might look back and see, after all the scams and scares of the last number of years, that we can use this as a turning point for our food culture.

This last week has been a terrifying time for many in food production, for many readers of this newsletter. We've all heard the frightening language: ban, redundancy, loss of markets, war situation. But if only this terror can be focussed, and the righteous anger chanelled into the right direction, we may yet see good from this shambles.

Firstly, even Tony Blair, ebullient promoter of GMOs and other scientific experimentation, is now talking about bringing back the small abbatoirs. We remember, back in 1990, visiting Bangor abbatoir for an article for The Independent on Sunday newspaper. Despite the best efforts of everyone who appreciated its value, despite our piece in a British national newspaper, Bangor abbatoir is now closed.
This story has been repeated all over Ireland and the UK, and now look what a fine mess we're in. Many people have been horrified by the journey the animals involved in this scare have had to take.

But let's just hold on a minute. Don't tell us you didn't know this was happening. Surely by now everybody knows about the inhumane conditions animals have to suffer and the villainous scams of the meat processing factories exposed by the Beef Tribunal.

Don't tell us that people don't advert to the fact that those potatoes come from Cyprus, that asparagus has been flown from Peru, that beef hails all the way from Argentina, and that bacon sandwich you are paying £3.95 for in your local coffee shop comes from Ned O'Keefe's cannibal porkers. International agri-business has reduced our food to nothing more than a commodity. It has taken the culture out of agriculture, and we have all, in one way or another, acquiesced to this insanity.

The answer to this nightmare scenario lies where it has always lain: with people power, with the power of the purse and the wallet.

It's time we stopped blaming the Department of Agriculture, and the poor old farmers, and take it upon ourselves to support local initiatives. We shouldn't settle for anything less than the food from our own back yards. When that great doyenne of Irish food, Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe House, talks about "local" food, she doesn't mean food from Waterford, or Tipperary, or North Cork. Local, for Mrs Allen, means the foods produced around Shanagarry, east Cork. That's local. That's what she uses. We must insist, through our purchasing power, that local shops and local restaurants use local butchers to source their meat, local organic farmers for their vegetables, and local Irish cheeses for their cheeseboards as well as for cooking. And when we do buy global goods we must continue to use our commonsense and the strength of our wallets. See Noticeboard.

Now is the time to rally round the craft butchers and the cheesemakers, and help them make up for the markets they may lose through this crisis, which is through no fault of theirs. It is time for all caterers and restaurants to start an initiative to support local food. Otherwise there will be less of it left when we finally get through the tunnel.

So restaurateurs, shopkeepers, and consumers, the ball is in our court.

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text © John & Sally McKenna
illustrations © Ken Buggy