It was "treasonable"' to give European and American tourists food from German discount supermarkets, Mr Peter Ward, one of Ireland's leading speciality food retailers, told the 500 delegates at the Bord Bia speciality food symposium here yesterday.
"Tourism and agriculture go hand-in-hand. Tourists come to Ireland to search for a real Irish food experience in a real Irish environment. The challenge is to get the Irish domestic dining experience on to the international table. For that to happen, we must make to sure it's on the table for the seven million visitors making their way to Ireland each year.
"We're selling a particular lifestyle concept. We must take care that the real food is getting to these people. The quality dining experience is undoubtedly available to people in the premier country-house and five-star hotels, but a large percentage of the visitors coming to Ireland don't qualify for that."
Mr Ward, whose shop in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, is dedicated to Irish artisan foods, said the speciality food sector, worth €250 million a year, needed to get a greater portion of the British market, worth €4 billion a year, and expand in the United States.
Controversially, he suggested that if a hotel or bed-and-breakfast establishment was registered with Bord Failte, it should be subject to "a degree of registration" to ensure the quality of the food sold. "It should become as important as your physical certification in hospitality," he said.
Mr Ward also suggested that Bord Bia should have a role in food safety. "If a problem is identified by the Department of Health or the Department of Agriculture and it's within a product that merits special attention, that occupies a certain position of importance in the Irish food cycle, Bord Bia should have a key role in the way that particular case is handled," he said.
That would facilitate the handling of any difficulty that might arise which could jeopardise the viability or future of that product. "Otherwise, we end up with long-term solutions to short-term problems, if something is lost or stops production."
Food writer and Daily Telegraph columnist, Ms Tamasin Day-Lewis warned that consumers were suffering from "food fashion fatigue" and were returning to a "basket of single ingredients" of great-tasting basics.
"Food producing giants" had hijacked our taste, but Ireland still had time to avoid becoming a supermarket culture. "The most special tastes are to do with place, provenance, memory, childhood. They are unpretentious, unmasked and owe nothing to a concept of fashion. They are also indigenous, traditional, intrinsic to the culture you belong to and come from," she said.
More than 100 of the top speciality food producers, who have set up stalls in the biggest ever outdoor speciality food market, will sell their produce to the public from 9.30 a.m. to 2 p.m. today.
