As Irish as tea from China

IRISH LABELS:If tea comes from China and an orange from Spain, how can they be part of the Love Irish Food campaign – and what is Irish food anyway?

THERE IS COFFEE from Central America and tea from Africa sitting on our supermarket shelves that proudly carry the Love Irish Food label. Joining them is a marmalade which carries the same stamp, despite the fact that neither oranges nor sugar – the main ingredients in the jar – are produced in Ireland. Confused? Join the club.

In the past two years, labels proclaiming the Irishness of hundreds of products have proliferated on our supermarket shelves as producers have cottoned on to the fact that we genuinely like buying locally produced or manufactured food.

Competing with Love Irish Food for the attention of shoppers are Guaranteed Irish stickers – not to be confused with the label of the same name which adorned copy books in the 1970s – and several others which proudly fly the Tricolour.

But do these labels guarantee people are actually buying Irish food? The short answer is no. While there is much to be commended about labels which encourage people to buy Irish an absence of clear and unambiguous leglslation governing labelling has created, critics say, a “confusing mess” which is doing a disservice to consumers and to local producers who struggle to get noticed.

Labelling matters. According to one Bord Bia study the number of consumers who checked the country of origin on labels before buying in 2009 was 71 per cent, compared with 50 per cent in 2001. Some 61 per cent of those surveyed said it was important to buy products produced in their local area. In October 2009, 38 per cent of respondents said they would definitely buy Irish products whenever they could – up from 30 per cent six months earlier. If people did buy locally, it would be of enormous benefit to producers. According to a report by the New Economics Foundation in London, every £10 (€11.72) spent at a local food business is worth £25 (€29.30) to the local area. When the same amount is spent in a supermarket, it is worth just £14 (€16.40) to the local economy.

Ella McSweeney, a presenter on RTE's highly regarded Ear to the Ground, is passionate about the issue and believes the Government's reluctance to legislate is doing consumers and artisan producers no favours.

“The situation when it comes to terms like ‘Irish’, ‘traditional’, ‘local’, and ‘farmhouse’ is a confusing mess for the general public,” she says. “Most critically, it is stopping honest producers from justifying a higher price. If everyone can put ‘traditional’ and ‘Irish’ on a food product, then it becomes meaningless.” The absence of legislation has “allowed the market to be taken over by PR and marketing companies,” she says.

It is a different story in other EU countries. France has the tightly controlled AOC system which designates where a product has come from. It has had the system since the 15th century. In Italy and Portugal the DOC operates while in Spain, they have the DO system.

Evan Doyle, chairman of the Taste Council of Ireland, agrees with McSweeney. He has been working on the development of a Local Food Heroes label which will start appearing on Irish shelves early next year. It will see primary and secondary food producers given assistance in advertising and promoting their produce in shops in their local area.

They will be given posters and “shelf talkers” – signs which can be attached to shop shelves to bring buyers’ attention to their goods – as well as promotional posters for a nominal cost. “We are trying to help local food producers to bring their produce to market,” he says “and we believe consumers want more information about where the produce they buy actually comes from,” Doyle says.

“I would prefer to have a bit more transparency in labelling particularly. There is such a great disconnect between the producer and the consumer but that is not to do down campaigns such as Love Irish Food”, he says. He points out that “in times like these I can see where these labels are coming from and employment is a huge issue.”

Doyle says that labelling is “open to abuse if the laws are not strict enough and they need to be tightened up, as they have been in Germany, Italy, France and Spain, where words like traditional, farm produced and local actually have legal definitions”.

There are steps that can be taken by Irish food producers who are genuinely using traditional methods and producing local food from animals or plants grown in Irish soil . They can use the 1992 EU labelling system which was inspired by the French AOC label.

This law protects the names of regional food and they are given one of three labels: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG).

To date only four Irish brands use this labelling system: Imokilly Regato cheese, Connemara Hill lamb, Timoleague brown pudding and Clare Island salmon. By contrast the UK has over 50, Italy has over 180 and France has nearly 230. “Given our rich food and farming heritage, we are chronically under represented and this needs to change,” says McSweeney.

The Love Irish Food campaign is a year old and was set up to promote Irish-manufactured food and protect jobs. Among the 77 brands that now sit under its umbrella are Avonmore, Club Orange, Flahavan’s, Cadbury, Barry’s Tea and Tayto. Under the LIF criteria at least 80 per cent of the manufacture of the product must take place in the Republic. It is a privately-run, not-for-profit company with members paying fees according to the turnover of the brand.

Guaranteed Irish was a label set up by the State in the mid 1970s. However, it was prohibited by the EU from using it to promote Irish products in the early 1990s as to do so was seen as not being very European. The label passed into private ownership but nearly disappeared during the boom as shoppers did not seem to care whether they bought Irish or not. It has seen a resurgence in recent years and more than 1,000 products carry the stamp. A Guaranteed Irish product is not 100 per cent Irish and the label means that it has created employment in Ireland for over 50 per cent of the production and manufacture of a product.

The chairman of Love Irish Food, economist Jim Power, stoutly rejects any charges that the label may mislead people. “We said at the launch that obviously we don’t grow tea in this country but the whole manufacturing process is carried out here by Barry’s. We assess all the applicants very carefully and have turned down around 10 per cent of applicants.

“I can see that confusion could exist,” he concedes, “but we have repeated our criteria over and over again and have been totally upfront and honest about it from the very start. There is no ambiguity as far as we are concerned.”

McSweeney says she is not against the aims of the Love Irish Food campaign and describes it as “a noble idea”. She says it “would be more honest if it was Love Irish Jobs. When I buy food, I buy it to eat and I don’t care where it was packaged. I care about where it came from and I am very keen to buy food which comes out of Irish soil.”

For his part, Power says he “would welcome any moves that would enhance food companies operating in this country and I think that the Love Irish Food campaign was a dramatic and important step in the right direction”.