Food nation
Two publications featured food specials this week with differing levels of success.
Last week, one of the world's great publications, a venerable liberal institution nearly 150 years old, produced a thought-provoking series of impassioned and in-depth articles about the homely matter of food, in all its social, economic and cultural complexity.
Unfortunately for Irish readers, that publication was the US weekly journal the Nation. Meanwhile, back in Dublin, the Irish Times ran a turgid week-long series on "what we eat" that rarely rose above food-industry PR, statements of the obvious and pub-chat, while leaving vast realms of relevant material entirely or largely unexplored.
Structural differences between the two publications are worth mentioning. The Nation relies greatly on freelance contributions, giving it the ability to choose writers with proven expertise and concern: Eric Schlosser, for example. The Irish Times is likelier to scan the newsroom for faces that fit, journalists who can spare just enough time from the daily grind to make a few calls to predictable sources.
Nation contributors don't get big money, but the journal has a dedicated investigative fund and writers know it welcomes aggressive journalism. There was a time when something similar might have been said of the Irish Times; but the only campaign it's likely to run these days is to promote a readers' competition in partnership with, say, an insurance company.
Stomach turning
The sheer awfulness of the Irish Times food series was most obvious in its best idea, the "Food Journeys" feature. This was supposed to track particular items from field to table, a chance for revealing specificity in a series that was otherwise vague. But since the "information" seemed to come largely from marketing departments, it consisted of ad-style flannel, of the "only ripe and succulent" sort. The Man from Del Monte would have been proud, but he at least had a smile for the peasants – the Irish Times scarcely acknowledged that any workers at all are involved in harvesting and processing food, and certainly made no mention of their pay and conditions.
For the Irish Times the only producer worthy of significant mention was the elusive "Irish farmer". Even here the closest thing to a perspective the paper could manage was confused handwringing. What are the local food consequences of a declining farm population? Kathy Sheridan seemed to think it might be that "in 10 years' time most beef on our shelves [will be] South American [and] the chicken... Asian". But it was clear elsewhere in the series that there is no reduction in Irish food output and we're still exporting heavily.
Sheridan's conclusion, like much else in the series, was a non-sequitur because it ignored the highly political economics of the food industry. A series like this should have given readers a context for hearing the Minister for Agriculture recently talking about the school-milk scheme, essentially a subsidised promotional and surplus-dumping tool for Irish dairy firms. Why, someone might have asked, is schoolkids' nutrition not in the purview of – what the heck – the Minister for Health and Children?
The most basic economic facts about our unhealthy food culture – far too much food is produced for first-world consumers, who pay less of their income for food than anyone in history, and Ireland is among the cheapest of the cheap – were never cited in six days of stories.
Chickening out
Confusion was most evident when the series clucked about chickens. On the Monday, we were assured that chef Richard Corrigan has "retracted many of the accusations he made about the quality of Irish chicken". What precisely has Corrigan retracted? Was it the bit about our chickens being "muck, crap... fed a load of antibiotics and a load of crap" – a quote repeated with no mention of retraction in the Wednesday main article?
In general the paper parochially endorsed Irish food (not surprisingly, given the preponderance of industry sources) without critical examination of how the concentration and intensification of production here might affect it. Our poultry sheds got barely a mention, our piggeries none at all.
The concept of "food miles" snuck in almost parenthetically on the last day. Slow Food, the global movement uniting food-lovers and ethical producers, didn't appear at all. Organic food was discussed without reference to the vigorous arguments about the varying standards from different bodies and with no discussion of how supermarket demand for organics is attracting corporate players with little regard for any deeper principles.
Frankly, it was sickening.