Set up food centre, urges Walsh

THE setting up of an interpretative food centre has been urged by outgoing Agriculture and Food Minister Joe Walsh.

He told delegates at the Bord Bia-organised Marketplace Ireland event in Dublin that food has shaped Ireland’s history to become part of its culture and psyche. “Now that our population is one of the highest since the Famine, perhaps the time has come to acknowledge and celebrate this food culture and tradition by having a food centre to track our development from subsistence level of farming to the world-class food industry that we have today”

Mr Walsh said over the last decades the industry has taken Ireland’s two greatest resources, her land and her people, and through technology, innovation and sheer determination, built a dynamic and sophisticated sector which is feeding markets across the globe.