Top chef criticises ‘bacteria police’

TOP chef Darina Allen has hit out at over-regulation of the food industry, describing health inspectors as “bacteria police”.

She also claimed the cost of complying with legislation was keeping small operators out of business.

With small artisan producers forced to spend thousands on legislation-compliant equipment just to establish themselves, Ms Allen called for “joined-up thinking” and regulations that are in proportion to the size of production units.

“Now, the only people who visit our businesses are bacteria police,” she said, adding that she wasn’t blaming the Environmental Health Officers themselves.

“But the way they’re being trained at the moment is that they’re regulators and not educators. A lot of the time the cost of compliance with the regulations is really an impediment to a lot of people starting off.”

In the past, she said the Government employed people to give guidance to small-scale food producers. “They were a mine of information and you wouldn’t have to be frightened of them. That whole system is no longer there and that needs to be re-instated at a time when people are looking to stay on the land and add value to their produce.”

The chairperson of Slow Food Ireland, Ms Allen was speaking at a conference in Kilkenny to promote Terra Madre — a four-day food policy event taking place in Waterford in September.

She said somebody who wanted to keep a few organic chickens would have to pay up to €40,000 to install a slaughtering system to comply with current rules.

“This is at a time when there’s a growing demand for this kind of produce from Irish people. We should be doing everything to support people and giving them the advice they need, without them feeling threatened and having to go into the sort of debt that would put a lot of people off.”

One of the aims of Terra Madre will be to bring together all stake-holders in the food industry and hammer out new policies to benefit all sides.

Darina Allen, who also runs Ballymaloe Cookery School, said that during the past 20 to 30 years “we have squandered 2,000 years of traditional food culture” because of the interpretation of food regulations, “regulations far out of proportion to the risk involved”.