I don't feel like chicken tonight!

What Slow Food seeks to protect, because it appreciates and respects the value and culture of handmade food, it seems our Environmental Health Officers are determined to destroy.

Last month we reported on the closure of Treasa de Barra's Bonina black pudding, one of the most distinctive of Irish artisan foods, and on this subject, see Adriaan Bartel's letter in this issue of Megabytes.

And here come the EHOs again: this time our very own chicken lady, Pat, has been forced to stop selling the small number of chickens which her father reared and which she sold each week from a small van in the centre of Bantry and in a couple of local supermarkets. There were none for sale this week when we went into the supermarket, and the butcher informed us that Pat had been instructed that she required some manner of equipment which would cost a paltry €15,000.00 euro. Of course, not being in any position to have that sort of money, closure was her only option.

And so, we can't get our hands on real, fine, hand-reared chickens any more.

Well done, the mighty EHOs! Another victory for blandness, for animal cruelty, for salmonella! Up the republic!

Please forward any details you may have of EHO-endangered artisans, and we will maintain a file of those lost to our food culture as a result of official policy.

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