IRELAND'S LEADING CHEFS DEMAND GM-FREE PRODUCE (1,463 words):
Good Morning. Let me firstly introduce myself. I have been in the restaurant and food business for most of my working life. I opened my first restaurant in 1985 in Clifden, Co. Galway, and in 1988 I headed down to Kerry to open my second restaurant The Strawberry Tree. I have always been a firm believer that as a restaurateur, I have the responsibility to my customers to source the very best produce, supporting local quality food producers and ultimately to serve my customers nothing less than the very best and freshest of foods. In 1992, The Strawberry Tree became the first restaurant in Ireland to publicly announce its commitment to sourcing only free-range, organic and wild foods.
Five years ago I moved the Strawberry Tree restaurant to Co. Wicklow, where I opened The Brook Lodge Hotel and Spa in Macreddin Village. In the restaurant all our food is either organic or wild, and it is our objective to be the first certified organic restaurant in Ireland. Currently we are being assessed on a month's trial review if we are successful to receive this license. To put this commitement to organic food into perspective, this year - in 2004 - my kitchen will purchase one million euro worth of organic produce.
Euro-Toques - of which I am a member - is The European Community of Chefs. My involvement goes back many years. Euro-Toques represents 4,000 chefs throughout Europe, and in Ireland we have just over 200. Like every Association we have objectives, but one of our main quests - and indeed one that is written into our Charter - is to protect the quality, diversity and flavour of our foods, indigenous food production methods and the traditional cuisines that have been established over hundred of years. We do this by working with and using local produce, promoting them on our menus and also by lobbying National and European decision makers. The organisation has recently set up an office in Brussels, which is focused mainly on engaging in permanent dialogue with EU decision-makers in order to defend the quality of our foods. Our members are well-placed in that they represent not only their own interests, but also those of their producers and of the consumers they cater for.
The small artisan producers, be they organic or conventional, are vitally important to the future of Ireland's food industry and economy. In 2003, the sector turnover in Ireland was €400 million, compared with €90 million in 1996. Employment in this sector is approximately 3,000. Our chefs and consumers are increasingly seeking out safe but differentiated high quality products. This differentiation is usually made on the basis of local, regional or geographic characteristics.
We believe that agriculture cannot be linear. It must and should incorporate several speeds, one of them being an agriculture of specific production, corresponding to strong local identity. This form of agriculture is more often craft based, more expensive but satiates the expectations of a growing number of consumers, Euro-Toques chefs, being one of them. We believe agriculture should be respectful of natural rythms and reject excesses of scientific manipulations which alter the quality of the product.
After 4,000 years of farming, agriculture has been industrialised for just 50 years - its yields increasingly reliant not on sound management of local resources, but on synthetic chemical inputs, intensive inputs, intensive rearing of livestock, and destruction of the countryside.
Industrialisation of food started with chickens. They became the cheap threat of the modern world. The concept of Food Fjordism followed, animals became anonymous units of production confined in minimum spaces to turn over the maximum output per unit of cost: conveyer-belt farms where chemicals and industrially processed seeds and feeds go in one end, and barely edible industrialised products come out the other; environmental overkill, health risks - of which we are acutely aware - and the derogation of flavour are the result of these irrational food production methods.
When it was clear that this food revolution was not working, the search was on for a substitute - and this is where geneticially modified foods come in. A perceived way of ensuring monstrous yields without monstrous infusions of harmful chemicals.
In its concept - 90% of which is controlled by due co-protection heavily backed by the US administration - their sights are set on world food domination and huge economic benefit. Apart from its immorality, the science vacuum it represents is far too frightening to contemplate.
As an organisation, there is an overwhelming concern - and indeed, legal responsibility - amongst our membership about the future of our foods and the health of our customers and families. GM agriculture has been heralded as a breakthrough for the world. Its advocates claim it yields higher crops, uses fewer herbicides and pesticides, and can provide a solution to world hunger. However, in reality - as we have heard today - these many stories paint a different picture. GM crops pose a significant threat to the future of our food chain - and indeed the livelihood of Euro-Toques members. Once GM crops are sown, there is no way to stop them from spreading - and spreading is irreversible. No one knows the long-term effects of GM crops on either human or animal health or on the environment. Cross-pollination with non GM crops is inevitable. Once released, genetic pollution will contaminate all our food - even organic.
Alarming predictions made by Teagasc in the past years for example speaks of a two-tier food market forging ahead with the biotech sector on one side and the organic sector on the other. The affordable food sector is the biotech one and is set to become "the largest segment of the agri-food industry" while the organic sector is envisaged to be a "very sizeable and growing" sector supplying "the more discerning customer whose primary concern is healthy living". They add, "competitiveness in organic-ecological production will be more difficult to achieve than with high-tech / bio-tech agriculture", that it will require "comprehensive research and technical support and should focus on food safety, purity and wholesomeness".
Surely, ladies and gentlemen, everyone in Ireland and indeed the world has the basic right to eat safe, healthy, unadulterated food - it should not be just for the sole privilege of those "discerning customers whose primary concern is healthy living".
So it is time we stood up, it is time we demand that our Government direct more money specified for Research and Development into organic farming methods, rather than research into GM crop development. It is vital that organic farming be allowed to thrive and outshine the biotech sector - for all our sakes. The facts are that everyone wants to eat healthy natural foods but as the bio and manufacturing industries manipulate our crops and vegetables, continue to add additives, preservatives and now GM - it is becoming increasingly different to source natural foods anymore. People now have to make a very conscious mental effort to go out and source organic or natural foods, so rather than it being the easy option, it is becoming more difficult and also more expensive - it makes no sense. Indeed, GM food feeds industry - it does not feed people.
As a member of Euro-Toques and as a hotelier and as restaurateur, I would ask our Government to:
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Throughout the world Ireland is still viewed as clean and green, and people visit Ireland and buy Irish products with this in mind. Now is the time to stand up and demand that Ireland be GM-free. Once the first crops are sown, there is no turning back the clock and it will be too late to save our natural food industry.
Since World War II the share of household budgets spent on food in Western Europe has dropped from about 50% to 12%. Even so, the policy of bringing down food prices continues to be pursued. We can't go on expecting high quality healthy food, and at the same time pay less and less for it.
Changing our food system requires political action. The criteria for food production today are to keep it coming, and keep it coming cheap. This is wrong. We must remember that if price becomes the defining criterion for selling food, it is also the definitive criterion for producing it. If we want good farming practices, food production in which we have confidence, and food we can take pleasure in eating, we must take responsibility as farmers, as retailers, as caterers, and as consumers.
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