The implicit question being posed by Kaethe was also, do you fancy a healthy and unique day out this coming weekend, where your physical work out is rewarded by a bag of spuds for the Christmas table AND a good story to tell while you’re eating them, one that involves you helping to save the future of Irish agriculture?

Kaethe is one of founders and drivers of  SPUDS, which was launched in 2012 “as a proactive response to the decision to trial genetically-modified (GM) blight-resistant potatoes in Ireland”.

SPUDS believes in “the power of the individual to effect change” and that “the most important subjects of the future will be water quality, soil fertility and nutrition.” Their aim is “to prove that Ireland will generate higher levels of innovation and employment by concentrating our research energy on the development of a food system that promotes lean production, enhanced nutrition and environmental health.”

That all sounds quite serious but they’ve been approaching their mission with a great sense of fun and imagination, as these rather brilliant demonstrations of the potential appeal of the wonkiest of potatoes proves:

Some of the results of their SPUDS Character Workshop, where SPUDS.ie asked people to get up close and personal with the kind of wonky-shaped spuds which are typically rejected: you can see more on Flickr.com/groups/spudscharacters2012

Having gotten people’s attention, SPUDS.ie went on to produce some award-winning ‘Crisps with a Conscience’, the sale of which aimed to bring people’s attention to the kinds of perfectly good potatoes which never reach their potential as a delicious crisp because somebody somewhere decides that us consumers won’t want to eat them. There is a second limited edition of these story-telling crisps in the planning, and that’s where you potentially come in. 

On December 8th, potato farmer John Swaby-Miller will be digging, picking, washing and preparing an acre of naturally blight-resistant Sarpo Axona potatoes, which will be sold in 5kg bags for Christmas to raise funds this next round of SPUDS.ie. And he and Kaethe need volunteers to help. 

The deal? Don some warm clothes and rain proofs and a pair of gardening gloves, and join them in Co. Wicklow for an invigorating day in the field with John and his piglets. Good company and a hardy potato lunch will be provided in a local pub. The designated meeting place is the parking lot of the Tap Pub, Kilbride, Co Wicklow, 45 minutes from Dublin on the N11: click here for the map.

The reward? “A warm feeling in your soul and your very own bag of the best SPUDS in Ireland for your Christmas Feast!”

If you’re interested, just drop Kaethe a line at research[AT]spuds.ie or give her a call on 087 2444185  by Wednesday December 4th so that they can put your name in the pot. And if you can’t make it, you could pop along to Dublin’s Block T POP UP Christmas Market in Smithfield where they will be selling their Christmas SPUDS from December 13th.

Keep an eye on Facebook for their event updates or see SPUDS.ie and their flyer below for more information. 

I’d say you might pay more than €20, but that’s all you’ll be asked to cough up at the second #EatOnlyIrish dinner at DIT Cathal Brugha Street which takes place on May 2nd from 6pm.

I’m not sure quite how they’ll do it for that price, seeing as how they’re kicking off with a starter of Ryefield goats’ cheese with fresh hazelnuts, beet and David Llewelyn’s apple balsamic. And following it with the likes of seared scallops with black pudding. And peaking the experience with quail breast served with quail boudin, Gubbeen venison salami and bacon popcorn. And finally approaching the finish line with a raw milk panna cotta with summer berries and cracked meringue.

If anyone was counting, you’d know that’s just five of eight courses. For €20.

I could go on but I probably don’t need to.

The whole thing is being coordinated by Daryl Murphy, a busy young fella in his 3rd year in DIT who goes under the Twitter handle of @CaptainSlowFA where he describes himself as Vice-chairman Slow Food Youth Network Ireland, slow food activist, Irish food lover, wine enthusiast, amateur food photographer, lover of good food, ‘Monger in Sheridans Cheesemongers. Give him a shout on Twitter, or find him at his blog on http://captainslowsfoodadventures.blogspot.com, though you’ll have to move fast as it’s booking up!

Look tasty? That’s what I thought when I tucked into it on the buzzing balcony of Farmgate Cafe in the English Market at lunchtime today.

I was down in Cork presenting a training session on Parma ham and Parmesan cheese as part of the EU-funded Discover the Origin campaign.

Those great Italian ingredients are just two examples of food products protected under the EU’s Protected Geographical Status scheme. Products certified under the scheme can be granted PDO status (Protected Designation of Origin) as these two are, which means they are fully produced, processed and prepared within their region of origin. Or they can be granted PGI status (Protected Geographical Indication) as just four Irish foods are, which means the product is distinctive to the region but some of its ingredients may come from outside of that region. (The blaa is a great example of the latter: unique to Waterford in terms of its heritage and tradition, but based on imported flour landed on the city’s historic quays.)

Anyway, it’s worth a look at www.discovertheorigin.co.uk to find out a bit more about Prosciutto di Parma and Parmigiano Reggiano, both of which of are 100% natural products still produced as they have been for hundreds of years. There’s shedloads of gorgeous recipes for everything from Parma ham pizza with gorgonzola, pear and honey to the Heston-esque Parmagiano ice-cream with carmelised onion, fig and Parma ham tatin. And you never know what you might learn. Like, did you know that Parmesan cheese gets more nutritious as it matures and is recommended by sports nutritionists and paediatricians alike as a great source of easily digestible protein, calcium and vitamins such as A and B2? Nope, I usen’t to either.

So what’s all this got to do with lunch in the Farmgate? Well just that after talking up Italian food for a couple of hours it was a joy to stroll down to the warren of homegrown talent that is the English Market, past the coral-like tripe and curling ox tongue and shiny-eyed turbot and whole smoked mackerel, past the raisin-sized olives at The Real Olive company, past O’Flynn’s gourmet sausages and Hederman’s smoked mussels and On the Pig’s Back’s terrines, and up the stairs into the bosom of the Market that is Farmgate Cafe. And to ask what the salad of the day is and be told it’s Jack McCarthy’s white pudding, served with pickled cucumber and diced beetroot and butter beans and lettuce leaves singing with vitality.

It’s a shame we only have four products in Ireland which have been granted PGI status and no PDOs to boast of. But isn’t it great that we have pockets of such rich culinary heritage too?

Next time you’re Leeside make a beeline for Farmgate. And bring an appetite with you, not to mention a large shopping bag. You’ll be glad of both.

It’s Galway calling. I’ve been trying to ignore it for days, even weeks, but it won’t stop at me.

The city that’s really a village (in the same way that Dublin’s really a town) is throwing another party this weekend you see. And like all great parties – something this village-city knows a thing or two about – the best action is going to be in the kitchen.

They’re calling this party a food festival, or ‘Galway Food Festival’ to be precise, but of course a party is a party by any other name. Especially when you’ve the likes of Mr Whippy Soundsystem whipping up a soundtrack for the Feast on a Street in Crane Square on Easter Monday afternoon (with roast pig-on-a-spit from Kai & Cava, and a potato-carrying competition to boot). And Maeve Higgins laying on the lunchtime comedy on Saturday and Sunday in The Kings Head. And a whole bevy of great Galway restaurants taking part in the food trail over the weekend.

It’s not all fun and games though. Like any decent party, there’ll be some good meaty arguments for everyone to pick over for weeks to come, such as Saturday’s GM Debate, hosted by Seamus Sheridan (he of the cheesemonger’s fame and Green Party persuasion) at 1pm in the appropriately name Green Room in Galway City Museum.

And it’s not all city-based either, with several food tours taking place over the weekend – including a trip out to the wilds of Connemara to visit the lovely Graham and Saoirse Roberts at Connemara Smoke House and see where the likes of locally caught tuna is transformed into their hot-smoked delicacy.

No self-respecting party (or food festival for that matter) would be complete without a bit of showing off, and there’ll be lots of that in the form of cookery demos, including one of Cooking With Seaweed (Sat, 12pm) with Martin O’ Donnell from West Restaurant at The Twelve in Bearna. Martin picks his own seaweed on Bearna strand, and he cooks a mean mackerel too, so double kudos to him.

Of course, there’ll be a drink or two taken, and even a class in how to taste a glass of wine, should you feel you need a refresher in the matter (Aniar Restaurant, 2pm, Sunday with Febvre Wines) as well as loads of other opportunities to blag some free tasters of fine wine over the weekend. Just have a gander at the full weekend’s listings here to seek out your best time to strike.

But really, it’s not the dancing or the laughing or the detours or the rows or the drinks that draw us to a great party. It’s the chance to meet people: to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. It’s the fact that you don’t know what conversation you’ll stumble upon or who you’ll bump into or what memory you’ll take away with you.

And that’s what makes the draw to Galway so darn hard to ignore right now. Besides the many Meet the Producers sessions peppered throughout the weekend, including one with the dynamic Allen brothers behind the award-winning Castlemine Farm (see my post about their pork which picked up an Irish Food Writers’ Guild Award recently), I know there’s going to be a bunch of the best people gathering in on Galway over the next couple of days.

I’d love to just jump in a car and take the two-hour drive across from Dublin and go see who I might meet at what’s shaping up to be a brilliant Easter weekend.

Regrettably, I’m otherwise engaged. Well okay, when I say regrettably, I’ll be in Paris, so all things considered, non, je ne regrette rien.

But if I wasn’t otherwise engaged, I’d damn sure be answering the call of Galway. What’s your excuse?

Over my breakfast of apple compote, yoghurt and granola, Crinnaughton apple juice, fresh coffee and fruit muffin, all of which overnight guests at The Tannery can enjoy in the comfort of their own bedrooms, I had time to contemplate the range of food producers, eateries and chefs we had come into contact with since Sunday evening. (You can read back over the last couple of posts for more details on our food-focussed road trip around the sunny South East).

Since hitting the road on Sunday, we had met all sorts of great Irish producers, from butchers, bakers and brewers to farmers, cheesemakers and ice-cream producers. Now it was time to meet some of the people who work with Ireland’s world-class fish and shellfish.

Having spent most of Wednesday and Thursday morning doing just that, I can tell you one thing for sure: the men and women responsible for harvesting and processing the bounty of seafood that comes from our island’s waters sure work hard for their living.

It’s an industry we should and can be proud of. It’s just a shame that so much of what we do produce goes out of the country (some 85%), and mind-boggling that we should import so much fish too (in the case of many hotels and restaurants, 90% of what they sell is imported). Fancy a visit to Ireland’s largest fish market? Just head for Cork airport.

There are many reasons for this odd set-up, from historic decisions to give away our nation’s fishing rights to ever-rising costs of doing business here in Ireland, but the bottom line seems to be that countries such as France and Spain are willing to pay for the premium product they recognise Irish seafood as, whereas we Irish have tended to seek out either cheaper alternatives such as imported salmon or ‘exotic’ foreign species such as tuna or seabass.

Our first stop on Wednesday morning found us in the company of Tommy Hickey of Hook Head Shellfish who talked us through the often “back-breaking” work involved in oyster production at his Bannow Bay aquaculture farm. Tommy is one of several oyster growers based in this picturesque tidal estuary between Hook Head and Carnsore Point. Like a kind of Swiss finishing school for Irish oysters, Bannow Bay is where oysters which were born in French hatcheries and grew up in neighbouring bays at Dungarvan and Woodstown come to shape up before they can be presented to high society at the finest Parisian dining rooms. They do so by feasting on the bay’s particular type of algae which is ideal for putting meat on the little molluscs. How the aqua-farmers such as Tommy work the bags in which the oysters grow is crucial too in helping to shape the all-important deep cup of the gigas or Pacific oyster. Still tucked up in those bags, the oysters finally travel back to France where they are processed and sold on as ‘Speciale’ oysters, one of France’s most sought after classifications. Who knew these super foods could be so well travelled?

Down behind the dunes of Kilmore Quay strand is another exporter of Irish shellfish, albeit on a very different scale. A visit to the processing depot of Sofrimar Seafood provides quite the sensory stimulation. In one hall, the din of thousands of seashells clacking adds an impressive soundscape to the sight of some hundred hard-working women processing scallops with skillful twists of knives. Step into one side room to be wooed by the sweet smell of fresh razor clams and shelled scallops, step into another containing thousands of frozen prawns stored at -15ºC to be greeted by the sight of light snow falling. I was glad to return outside to the sunshine of one of the hottest days of the year, with a newfound appreciation for the people who process our seafood.

It was nearly lunchtime so we headed down to the quayside towards the modest little seaside shack that houses The Crazy Crab, BIM Seafood Circle’s Newcomer of the Year 2012 – but not before stopping in to see the HQ of Saltees Seafood Ltd, a family-run operation headed up by the formidable O’Flaherty clan. You may have seen the delivery trucks of these seafood wholesalers spinning around the country with their bold orders to ‘Eat More Fish’ emblazoned on the side. A family of six brothers, the O’Flahertys have cleverly and carefully developed their business over 25 years so that they now control every aspect of the process from  catching the fish to marketing, selling and distributing it. Those trucks sure do get around, travelling from their Wexford base down to Cork and up to Dublin and even as far as Killybegs, not to mention across the waters and down as far as Madrid and Barcelona. Two thirds of their catch is exported, including their entire catch of certain species such as megrim and witches (or white sole) – both plentiful Irish fish which Michael O’Flaherty describes as great eating. Sadly, even the O’Flahertys can’t control the fact that there is zero demand in Ireland for these native fish, although they would be happy to supply them to customers such as Cavistons in Greystones and Glasthule should you the consumer care to go looking for them.

Michael spends his working days on land heading up the marketing side of the business but he spoke with great respect for his brothers and their crew who work out at sea on the company’s beam trawlers. These guys work non-stop for several days at a time, breaking three or four times in 24 hours to catch an hour or two’s sleep as the nets fill before several hours of hauling and sorting. With the cost of fuel having doubled since 2008, costs such as labour have to squeezed to the absolute minimum without compromising the all-important safety of the crew. It’s a fine balancing act.

Balance is also key to conserving local lobster stocks, as John Hickey from BIM explained to us over a lovely lunch in Crazy Crab Seafood Bistro and Cafe, where everything from local crab and prawns to smoked Union Hall mackerel to freshly landed lemon sole was delicious. Well fed once again, we headed down to the quay to see just how that balance in lobster stocks is achieved. Besides returning any undersized lobsters to the water (the minimum landing size being a 87mm ‘carapace’, which is the main body between the claws and tail) a selection of lucky female lobsters are marked as protected and sent back out into the waters to procreate in peace. I got to clip the iridescent blue tail of one female who was heavy with glistening black eggs – and kept the cut-out v as a little souvenir of the trip.

The final piece in this deliciously fishy puzzle came the next morning, having travelled back inland to Kilkenny city for our final installment of fine Irish eating (see tomorrow’s post for details of dinner in Campagne and Irish tapas in Zuni). We drove out on a sparkling Thursday morning to visit Goatsbridge Trout Farm just outside Thomastown, where Ger Kirwan took us around their small-scale set-up. This second-generation operation has transformed in response to market demands over its 50-odd years of existence, most recently with the addition of an onsite processing hall. Here they can gut, fillet and pin bone whole trout, develop new products such as Ireland’s first trout caviar, and sell products directly to visitors at their factory shop. This is a fish farm worth a visit, even just to see for yourself the quality of the water and the low stocking density (which is below that required for organic certification).

As part of the Taste of Kilkenny food trail, Goatsbridge is well set up for self-guided visits too, with interpretative signs taking you through the lifecycle of the fish from eyed ova in the onsite hatchery to full-sized adults in the aerated earthen ponds. As with most of the producers on the trail, visits are by appointment, as in give them a bell if you’re in the area and let them know you’d like to drop by. They’ll most likely be hard at work – but you’re guaranteed to be made welcome.

It’s like I said. One thing’s for sure: the men and women responsible for harvesting and processing the fish and seafood that comes from our island’s waters sure work hard for their living. They are rightfully proud of what they do and how they do it. It’s worth going out of your way to support them – whether by asking for Irish fish at your supermarket, fishmongers or local restaurant, or by going to visit them on their own surf.

Tune in tomorrow for my last installment about this week’s Irish Food Trip, or you can retrace our route on Twitter (@holymackers) by searching for #IrishFoodTrip.

You might think it’s because I’ve been busy off living my life, not giving you a second thought. But quite the contrary. It’s not me I’ve been thinking about, it’s you. Or to be more precise, your food.

Yes, the future of your food has been quite the recurring theme in my offline life of late.

What got me thinking about you in the first place was the excellent exhibition in Dublin’s Science Gallery which runs until April 5th, titled EDIBLE and offering a taste of the future. It’s well worth checking out, though be sure to hang about and get chatting to the mediators who can help you tease out the backstories behind the eclectic and often interactive exhibits. Favourites include insect powder 3D-printed into edible intricacies, and an orchestra of fermentation vats cooking up some fruit-based hooch and making a racket while they’re at it. There’s also regular feeding times and curated dinners, and lots of questions raised about how the choices made today will affect the food of tomorrow.

Which brings me back to you. And your food. We (being the team behind For Food’s Sake) took it upon ourselves to ask you ‘What Will Your Future Taste Like?‘ at last Thursday’s FFS event in the Science Gallery.

The answer included flavours as diverse as devilish smoked Bloody Marys and wholesomely moreish kelp crackers dipped in sprouted hummus with cumin and coriander. We had wonderful dried biltong from Caveman Super Snacks, inspired by South Africa and made in Wicklow. And we had the most incredible raw milk and butter from Ballymore Farm, so new to the market that the labels weren’t yet back from the printers.

There was lots of activity, with Oisin Davis demonstrating the wonders of spherification and molecular mixology (he made a fancy cosmo), Ed Hick showing us how to skin a wild rabbit and Shaun Hanna of The Oarsman demonstrating some creative uses for dehydration in the kitchen.

And, as anyone familiar with previous For Food’s Sake events would expect, there was lots of talk, mostly about food. We talked about the rise of interest in growing your own veg, and other ways you can get more involved in the production of the food you eat, including through GIY Ireland (Grow It Yourself, with 150 local groups throughout the country), OOOBY initiatives (Out Of Our Own Backyard groups, such as the one in Newbridge) and CSA schemes (Community Supported Agriculture, such as the one in Cloughjordan).

We talked CIY too, or Cook It Yourself, exploring different ways you could think about how you cook your food, including choosing not to cook it at all, as preferred by advocates of ‘raw food’ such as Natasha of Natasha’s Living Foods (she of the incredible kelp crackers and glowing skin). Or how you could use a hair-dryer in a wooden box combined with a sieveful of star anise and a blow torch to table-smoke some lamb carpaccio, before serving it on a skewer wrapped with rosemary-flavoured candyfloss, as Tom Lynn of the Sett Food Club did at their most recent supper club night in Dublin’s Supafast building. Or whether you might be tempted to try out some of the textural techniques pioneered by chefs such Ferran Adria, and dabbled with by chefs such as Shaun Hanna.

We looked back to the future when butcher Ed Hick shared his passion for foraging, in our FIY session on Finding It Yourself. And then we strapped ourselves in with bio-hacker Cathal Garvey as our captain and guide, and fast forwarded ourselves into a brave new MIY (Make It Yourself) world where bio-technology might be taken out of the hands of powerful multinationals for whom patenting living things is a matter of logic, and returned to the people to use in a myriad of mind-bending ways.

Well, as you can imagine, that was a lot to prepare never mind to digest, so after Thursday I took a few days break from thinking all about you and your future food. I knew you’d understand.

Anyway, I bounced back and this morning was back on the subject as part of my regular TV3 ‘Food for Thought’ slot on The Morning Show with Sybil and Martin. You can have a watch of it here if you like (18 minutes in). We chat about how you can centrifuge foods to make things like peas taste even sweeter, not by adding anything but by extracting something. And we talk about eating insects, and whether you might like to. We discuss the £200,000 test-tube burger, and whether you’ll get a chance to taste it anytime soon. And finally we talk about the current debate over bringing calorie counting onto all Irish menus.

If you haven’t heard, the FSAI have been welcoming submissions from people on the topic – and today is your last chance to have your say. You may well think it’s a great idea. In the US and Australia, it is already mandatory for all large fast food companies to inform customers of the calorie content of menu items. The FSAI argue that there is evidence that access to this information is effective in curbing the public’s calorie intake. You can read their press release here.

But others have concerns. Imagine if everytime you wanted to cook dinner for your family or friends, you had to provide them with an accurate breakdown of calorie content. It might stop you picking something delicious looking up at your local market, because although you can gaurantee it is fresh and seasonal, you may have no way of testing its calorie content.

For many food outlets who like to have flexibility in their menus, whether they be small cafes or fine-dining restaurants, mandatory testing would present serious challenges. Under any new legislation, they clearly need to be treated differently to large-scale food outlets such as fast food chains where all the food is streamlined and pre-prepared and easy to measure. If not, we could effectively be discouraging food outlets away from transforming fresh, natural ingredients into fresh, natural food, and encouraging them to buy in pre-processed but more easily measured food.

There are other issues too, including the narrowly reductive nature of defining food by its calorie content regardless of its broader nutritional benefits, the environment from which it came, the care with which it was prepared or indeed the appetite with which we approach it. A healthy relationship with food does not necessarily begin with a fixation on calories, as many survivors of eating disorders know only too well.

Anyway, I’ve probably done more than enough talking on the matter at this stage. If you want to have your own say, leave a comment here on the blog – or even better, leave a comment at the FSAI website today, while you still can.

After all, it’s your future, and your food.

Yes, according to recent research conducted by the ESRI (Economic and Social Research Institute) into ‘Determinants for Vegetarianism and Partial Vegetarianism’, I’m ticking all the boxes. And you know what, they’re kinda right. While I’m fond of a bit of grilled liver and will eat a rib-eye with relish, I don’t eat meat more often than I do eat meat. And I’m part of a growing trend – although Ireland is lagging way behind our UK neighbours on this one, with just 5% of the Irish population eating meat “infrequently” compared to 23% of them next door.

The working paper from the ESRI on the subject elaborates that “Concern for animal welfare and the environment are among the factors driving this trend. The relationship between meat consumption, especially red meat, and global environmental change has been acknowledged (FAO, 2006). Ruminant livestock are major emitters of methane, the second-most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas.”

Felicity Lawrence’s recent Guardian piece takes up the same point, stating that our global meat eating habits in one way or another “now contribute nearly one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most people could do more for the climate by cutting meat than giving up their car and plane journeys.”

Cost is another factor driving people away from meat. In the same piece, Felicity Lawrence reports that last August the price of minced meat rose by 25%, driven up by commodity values and the corresponding cost of animal feed. She suggests this might go some way to explaining a 9% increase in sales of Quorn in the UK last summer.

More and more food writers are championing the idea that eating less meat is the way forward. Michael Pollan captures it in his pithy and deceptively simple-sounding dictum: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Mark Bittman has much to say on the subject. And now Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has based his latest food campaign (and corresponding book and TV series) around the notion that we need to embrace vegetables, and get over our slavish reliance on meat.

You can read his reasoning in a recent Guardian article, but one of the points he makes is that “we need to eat more vegetables and less flesh because vegetables are the foods that do us the most good and our planet the least harm”. Indeed, the ESRI working paper refers to studies in the US into “medical costs associated with meat consumption in the USA”  which “estimate that costs of between $30-60 billion per year result due to the higher prevalence of hypertension, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, gallstones, obesity and food-borne illness among omnivores compared with vegetarians”.

So, eating less meat is better for us and our environment all round it would seem, not to mention the fact that when meat becomes an occassional choice rather than a default, it frees you up to be choosier about what meat you do eat, and the kind of life, diet and death it has been granted.

But what about protein deficiencies, you ask (as did my mother at last Thursday’s For Food’s Sake event, when we asked: ‘Meat – Do We Eat Too Much?’)… well apparently most of us eat too much protein. According to Mike Rayner of the British Heart Foundation and author of The Meat Crisis, most of us – even regular meat eaters – are already getting about 31g a day of protein from various non-meat sources, including cereals, fruit, nuts and veg. Which is just 5g less than what Geoffrey Canon, editor of World Nutrition, reckons women need, and 9g less than what men need. Not a huge gap for the vegetarian or partial vegetarian to make up so.

Others are more generous in their portion recommendations: Safe Food report that health professional recommendations are “57g in a single portion of lean, red meat”, but that the average portion size consumed during a meal is 121g. When you put that in the context (as Derry Clarke of l’Ecrivain did at our discussion) of an 8oz steak, which is about the smallest that a restaurant would dare serve up, 121g or just over four ounces of steak sounds positively puny.

And while there used to be a panic that only meat contained ‘complete proteins’ along with the necessary amino acids, Felicity Lawrence states that “nutritional science has subsequently caught up with the wisdom distilled in peasant cuisines that depend on beans and grains” and now acknowledges that meat is not the only source of these important amino acids and nor do we have to consume them all at once to reap their benefits.

If all this has got you thinking and you would like to read some more, the following links may be of interest (just click on any to link through). If the UN’s predictions of the global demand for meat consumption doubling by 2050 is right, the issues look like important ones for us to get our heads around.

ESRI working paper

Article by Frank Armstrong, one of our panellists

Article on the subject from Felicity Lawrence

HFW’s River Cottage Veg manifesto

Safe Food on our relationship with beef

So, rather than write up a post explaining why you should think about coming along to the debate I’m chairing tomorrow night at The Sugar Club, organised by the Raw Milk Campaign, I’m gonna just post their press release, and some links to some recent articles on the topic.

If you’ve been invited on Facebook and are gonna come, please RSVP to help spread the word. Or if you think you know anyone who might be interested, send them this link.

Doors open at 7pm and the debate will kick off at 7.30pm sharp. Hope to see you there.

PRESS RELEASE BEGINS:

A RAW ISSUE: THE RAW MILK DEBATE

Tasty, Nutritious Drink or Threat to Irish Dairy Industry and the Nation’s Health?

Panel Discussion on Proposed Banning of RAW MILK Sales in Ireland to take place at the Sugar Club, Dublin on Tuesday 6 September at 7.30pm.

On Tuesday 6 September in The Sugar Club, Dublin, a panel will debate the merits of the proposed ban on sales of Raw Milk in Ireland. The debate has been organised by the Campaign for Raw Milk, a group representing food businesses and organisations who believe people have the right to choose. Panellists in the debate will present the various arguments for and against the ban.

Raw (unpasteurised and unhomogenised) milk is believed by many to have superior taste and nutritional qualities to pasteurised and homogenised commercially available milk. It is thought to boost immunity and is linked with protection against a variety of health conditions. Sales of raw milk are allowed in many EU countries as well as 28 states of the US. Demand for the product is growing and it commands a much higher price than commercially processed milk. As such Raw Milk sales are seen as an important opportunity for small-scale dairy farmers.

However, others argue that the risks related to unpasteurised milk, specifically the high level of pathogens it can contain, are too high and that it poses a threat to health. The Department of Agriculture say that regulating the sector would be too costly and that any outbreak of food borne illness related to Raw Milk would also pose a serious threat to Irish dairy exports.

Chaired by journalist and food writer Aoife Carrigy, the panel will include journalist and broadcaster Ella McSweeney, who will share her research from both sides of the argument; dairy farmer David Tiernan, retailer Kevin Sheridan of Sheridan’s Cheesemongers; Ben Pratt, founder of www.Naturalfoodfinder.co.uk and author of Nutrition’s Playground; Tim Camon, Agricultural Officer, FSAI; Dr Mary Flynn, Chief Specialist in Public Health Nutrition FSAI; and Dr Kieran Jordan of Teagasc Food Research Centre. Representation from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry was invited but declined. Relevant stakeholders have also been invited to attend.

Each panellist will be given an opportunity to briefly present their views, after which a debate by the panel will take place, followed by a Q&A session. Audience participation will be welcome. The event is open to industry and to the public.

EVENT DETAILS

TITLE: A RAW ISSUE: SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT BAN SALES OF RAW MILK IN IRELAND?

DATE: Tuesday 6 September 2011

VENUE: The Sugar Club, Leeson St, Dublin 2

Time: Doors open 7pm. Event starts 7.30pm sharp!

BOOKINGS: No need to book, however we would be delighted to receive advance confirmation of your attendance to Elisabeth Ryan: irishrawmilk@gmail.com

€5 admission charge to cover the cost of venue: any monies raised above this will be donated to charity

More Info: The government intends to ban the sale of raw milk for direct human consumption before the end of 2011. The Campaign for Raw Milk believes that consumers should have a choice and wants regulations instead of an outright ban. The government, advised by the FSAI, believes that the risks associated with drinking raw milk are unacceptable. At this debate we will examine this issues from both sides and see why the government intends to ban it as well as hearing arguments from those who believe it is beneficial and farmers who believe they should have the right to produce it for sale.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT CURRENT CONSUMPTION OF RAW MILK IN IRELAND & MILK PRICES, BACKGROUND ON THE IRISH LEGAL SITUATION, SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON RAW MILK AND MORE PLEASE VISIT www.rawmilkireland.com

The CAMPAIGN FOR RAW MILK includes: ICSA, CAIS, Slow Food Ireland, Ireland Guide, Bridgestone Guides, Good Food Ireland, Euro-toques Ireland, Irish Food Writer’s Guild, Sheridans Cheesemongers, A. Cavistons

PRESS RELEASE ENDS

There’s been quite a lot written on the topic in recent weeks: click here to link through to my piece in the Sunday Business Post which looked at the impending ban in the context of a broader tendency towards over-regulation of the Irish food industry. Or see the Press and Further Reading sections of  www.rawmilkireland.com.

WHEN? Continuing every day until Monday 6 June, 10am–6pm

WHY? Apart from the inspiring show gardens and range of plants for sale (plus some great gardening courses from the likes of Jimi Blake in his magical Huntingbrook Gardens in north Wicklow), a major draw this year as ever is the variety of food and drink offerings, with the artisan beer tent and particularly the Cooley Distillery stall worth meandering by. This year’s layout of the newly extended Food Village is particularly attractive, and demos by the likes of Catherine Fulvio, Rozanne Stevens, Donal Skehan and Neven Maguire are sure to draw the crowds.

WHO? There’s a great representation of Irish artisans good and great. Don’t miss in particular Meadowsweet Apiary‘s mellow Irish honey and honeycomb; Ed Hick’s unique Bacon Jam (a thing of genius to spread on toast under your scrambled egg); four great goat’s cheeses – Knockdrinna Gold (mild and smoky), Cooleney‘s Gleann Oir (crumbly and tangy), Corleggy (hard and herbaceous) and Bluebell Fall’s Original (melting-soft and meadow-fresh); Burren Smokehouse’s range of smoked fish (especially the hot and cold smoked Irish salmon); Jane Russell’s handmade sausages; Lolly & Cooks’ myriad coloured cupcakes; Ponaire coffee beans; Irish apple juice either from The Apple Barrel, Carlow, or The Apple Farm, Tipperary. And if you’re still hungry after grazing that lot, you can grab yourself a steak sandwich fresh off the grill, or a pulled pork sandwich from the Crowe brothers farm.

WHERE? In the heart of Phoenix Park. There’s ample parking, or free shuttles from the Luas stop at Heuston, or do as we did and enjoy the excuse to stroll through one of the city’s most under-appreciated amenities, Phoenix Park itself.

HOW MUCH? €20 for a weekend ticket (or €15 concession). Children under 16 go free, with a maximum of three children per adult.

CONTACT? bloominthepark.com

Last night, investigative reporter Phillip Boucher-Hayes – who co-wrote the 2009 book Basketcase: What’s Happened to Ireland’s Food with wife Suzanne Campbell – followed up their initial forays into the underbelly of how we Irish eat (and what it might mean) with an hour-long documentary entitled What’s Ireland Eating? Suzanne Campbell has been fast establishing herself an authority on all things food and agricultural through forums such Radio One’s Today With Pat Kenny; The Irish Times and Irish Independent; Basketcase, the blog; and the inaugural For Food’s Sake discussion – and she acted as Food and Farming Consultant for this excellent piece of investigative journalism. The result was the kind of telly that justifies paying a TV licence, and of which we need more made.

There were many quotable figures worth getting your gob around. Such as, did you know that we Irish eat more ready-to-consume breakfast cereal than any other nation? Or that more than 40% of our diet is made up of processed foods (which, by its nature, is full of preservatives, and several steps away from the natural wholefood state that our bodies most easily recognise and respond to). Or that we Irish eat half the quantity of spuds we ate just 10 years ago, and that one third of that is in a fatty form such as crisps or chips? Or, that for every euro we spend on our five-a-day of fresh fruit and veg, we spend €1.60 on ‘treats’? (Think about it before you protest – I did, and it shut me up pretty quick.)

Seeing is believing, and it was the graphic display of what a pumped-up piece of pork looks like that got a lot of people proclaiming on social media networks that they were clearing that lunchbox staple of ham out of their family’s diet after last night’s viewing. Why? Well, it turns out that most ‘ham’ – traditionally, pork preserved by salting – is today preserved by being injected with a salt-water mix (brine) filled with preservatives such as nitrite, phosphate, dextrose and sodium ascorbate.

Now, it’s not just that all of these jolly extras add a whopping 20%+ extra weight to the final product (mostly in the form of so-cheap-it’s-free-water) that had people rethinking their favourite sandwich filling. No, I suspect it was more the weight of the health warning from none other than the World Cancer Research Fund. We’re all familiar by now with the advice regarding consumption of red meat and its connection with bowel cancer, which is the second most prevalent form of cancer going. Well, the clanging headline of the first half of this “eye-opening” documentary (the most repeatedly tweeted comment at the busy hashtag of #whatsirelandeating) is that the regular consumption of processed meats is significantly more likely to lead to bowel cancer than that of red meat. Rashers & bangers, chorizo & salami, sliced ham, the lot. Sure, some producers do it better than others, so there can be a certain damage limitation through considered sourcing, but certainly something worth starting to think about eh?

The documentary went on to raise many more interesting questions. Here’s one: would you pay attention to the country of origin of chicken bought in a supermarket? Yes? And you’d rather that it were Irish? Yes. In that, you are like most of us Irish.

What about when you order a chicken sandwich in a deli. Ever ask them where they source it? Or your chicken curry take-out? Or your roast chicken supreme and risotto in the local restaurant? What, you never think to ask?

Turns out, you’re no different to most of us, who tend to assume that third parties are serving us up Irish chuck. But, at one fifth the cost of domestically produced poultry, chicken imported from the likes of Thailand is too flapping cheap to resist for most outlets. The surprising thing is not that they make that choice on our behalf. The surprise is that we don’t think to check what choices they are making. After all, it doesn’t take much for us to make our voices heard. As the Bord Bia slogan goes, it’s a case of Just Ask(ing).

Anyway, there was lots more too (including a very powerful diatribe on the imbalance of power between supermarkets, consumers and suppliers), but at the end of a fact-packed hour’s worth of food documentary (which you can catch here if you missed it), several quotes packed a punch for their memorable simplicity. They went like this.

“Food is too important to treat like it’s any other business.” Reporter Phillip Boucher-Hayes.

“Every food choice is a political action.” One of the many well-informed talking heads informing our heads throughout the hour.

“We need to shop not just as consumers but as citizens too.” Another talking head. (Yes, I’m gonna have to go re-watch the programme too.)

All of this might have been rather depressing viewing of a Sunday night, were it not for the fact that Monday morning saw the start of that weeklong campaign I already referred to, which involves attempting to eat only food which can rightfully call Ireland its place of primary origin. This is a trickier definition than you might think – something I’ll return to later in the week to tease out.

For now, you might go read what Brendan Allen himself says of it on eatonlyirish.com. Or go read how two of the organisers from the For Food’s Sake collective get on with their endeavours to Eat Only/No Irish For A Week. If you’re inspired to join in, remember that rules are there to aspire to – and to be broken. Better to pay attention to what you’re eating and take part in this weeklong conversation than to decide it’s too difficult and give up before you’ve started.

Like I said, it’s a big week for Irish food. Will you play your small part in it?