Sir, - In view of current fears about the danger of BSE, I would highly recommend a vegetarian lifestyle to your readers. For anyone wishing to switch to a meat-free diet, the Vegetarian Society of Ireland has plenty of information, which is available from the address below. - Yours, etc.,
Betty Reeves, Honorary Membership Secretary, Vegetarian Society of Ireland, Box 3010, Dublin 4.
Sir, - Your recent article on organic foods produced a readers' response (January 24th) which showed breathtaking confidence in the ability of science to provide safe food. The writer apparently sees no link between the industrialisation of farming and plummeting consumer confidence in our main agricultural produce - beef.I find it curious that while "industrialised nations" such as Germany and Denmark are busy developing organic dairying and beef, we Irish should happily plod on polluting our lakes and rivers, building an incinerator to deal with bonemeal (which used to be a perfectly safe fertiliser), spraying our few indigenous vegetables with a cocktail of chemicals and looking to genetic engineering for our next wave in high-tech farming.No thanks! The reason for such rapid growth in the organic sector is that consumers are waking up to what has been happening down on the pharm. They no longer trust various claims that pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are perfectly safe, no more than they trusted that scientists who claimed that BSE, having moved from sheep to cattle, could never go any further up the food chain. And BSE is not the only mistake we have made where farm improvements are concerned - many previously safe pesticides and herbicides have been discreetly removed from use down the years and more will follow.Consumers have already given genetically engineered foods a resounding thumbs-down. The emotional blackmail that if we don't swallow GM foods, developing countries will starve has been rubbished by all of the principal aid agencies working in the field. Hunger is not caused by lack of food, but by lack of distribution. Converting farmers from small-scale mixed farming to genetically engineered cash crops in developing countries is no panacea.Ireland's profile of small-scale farms is ideally suited to organic production. Indeed, with forecasts of continued rapid decline in the number of full-time farmers, organic production, being more labour-intensive, may be the only viable way for small farmers to make a full-time job of it.More importantly, our number two industry - tourism - will not benefit from increased industrialisation of the farm sector. Water quality, food quality and the vision of Ireland as a clean, green country will not hold up if we fall behind our European partners in the switch to ecological farming techniques.Describing organic consumers as full-bellied food production bashers is a bit irrational considering the appalling wholesale destruction of beef we are currently witnessing as a "market support" for the current regime. - Yours, etc.,Brendan Clifford, Wholefoods Wholesale Ltd., Kylemore Industrial Estate, Killeen Road, Dublin 10.