The Menu: Food and nature at the heart of the Burren

Plus, the Menu has a go of BKultured's fizzy berry kefir, and looks at National Biodiversity Week

Burren Smokehouse: one of the local foodie staples at Burren Slow Food Festival

Focus on biodiversity

In our seemingly green and pleasant land, all 50 shades of it, far too many of those shades acquire their verdant luminosity thanks to the egregious application of artificial nitrates which have wreaked untold damage on both our soils and freshwater rivers and lakes, and going on to cause similar damage to our coastal sea waters, where we have had several highly damaging algal blooms already this century off the southern Irish coast. It is all part of the staggering and quite catastrophic damage to our natural biodiversity where, for all our much-vaunted ‘natural wilderness’, used to market Ireland as a tourist destination, we in fact have one of the worst records in Europe when it comes to protecting our precious natural bounty and resolving the issues is also intrinsically entwined in measures to address climate change.