President praises rich food heritage at Terre Madre gastronomic festival

THE Irish palate and food industry have been revolutionised in recent years, President Mary McAleese told the Terre Madre gastronomic festival in Waterford.

“We have, firstly, a wonderful food heritage and, secondly, an ambition to secure a wonderful, healthy and profitable food future,” she said yesterday.

“The first is the bedrock of the second for, as Slow Food Ireland rightly reminds us, we have a very rich resource in our traditional food culture.”

Mrs McAleese said it is no harm that this is United Nations International Year of the Potato, a traditional Irish food that in many ways changed the country’s entire history.

“A nation that over a short few summers lost a million of its people to starvation as we did, and two starving million more to emigration, has reason to know how important are all those issues that are encompassed by the word ‘food’ — from nutrition value to security of food supply, from affordability to accessibility,” she said.

President McAleese said Slow Food Ireland and Terra Madre, “help us to focus more deeply on those values of care for one another and care for ourselves through caring deeply and intelligently about the food we consume.”

Terre Madre is helping chart a path to great food by reconciling traditional skills with the best of science, she said.

Carlo Petrini, president and founder of the Slow Food Movement, which has 85,000 members in over 130 countries, said farmers are the true guardians of the planet, the conservers of biodiversity and traditional wisdom.

“To re-localise food production is to combine economic value with a sustainable model for agriculture.

“Since we are aware of the need to re-generate agriculture through young people, thousands of students and young farmers have now joined the Terre Madre network. “We need to exploit their creativity and the support of the university system which needs to elaborate new economic, political and cultural strategies,” he said.

Food ministers from north and south, Michelle Gildernew and Trevor Sargent, are attending the event, which continues until tomorrow when a farmers’ market will be held at John Roberts Square from 11am to 3pm.