In 1986, Pierre Romeyer, one of Belgium’s great chefs, became aware of the risks of food abuses. With his friend Paul Bocuse, he contacted other well-known chefs, who were passionate about their profession in all of the European countries: Wegner Vogel in Sweden, Gualtiero Marchesi in Italy, Juan Mari Arzak in Spain, Cas Spijkers in the Netherlands, Myrtle Allen in Ireland, Arne Fusager in Denmark, Eckart Witzighann in Germany, Michel Da Costa in Portugal, René Jacquemin in Luxembourg, David Miller in the United Kingdom and a few others; to set up the Euro-Toques Association.

I have been a member of this organisation since the early nineties, and was elected the Commissioner General for Ireland in January of this year.

On election I said that I wanted the theme of my term of office to be something that I feel very passionate about, that is that we should look carefully at our children’s diet as their health and welfare was being put in serious jeopardy by the current trend towards additive laden fast foods.
I think that I have already given my mission statement on this in a previous “Words” piece, Back to the eating Board
One of the highlights of our year in Euro-Toques is our annual Food Forum and Fair which was held last Sunday in Brook Lodge in Macreddin in Wicklow.
We decided that our theme this year should be

A is for Apple’ Educating our Children to Eat Well

Gabby Cribbin and Eva and Molly Lewis (all good chefs daughters)
tell us what its all about

We were lucky enough to get the services
of John Bowman of RTE as our chairman
for this forum.

John is a committed Food Person as well as being a superb chairman.

MEP, Mairead Mc Guinness agreed to sit on the panel for this discussion
As did Giacomo Moioli of Slow Food International, Hugo Arnold, who writes a weekly food column on the Irish Times and , putting his head into the lions cage, Paul Murphy, Chairman of Unilever also agreed to sit on the panel.

The discussion was an extremely lively one and, whereas I don’t think any world shattering decisions were made I do feel that the subject has now been raised and can now be debated.

The fair which was also on on the day was
a particularly lively one, with teriffic artisan
food from all parts of the south and north
of Ireland available.

We finished up the night with a superb table of the very best of Irish food produced by Evan Doyle and his team in Brook Lodge.

Myrtle Allen and Eimer Bowman at the Fair

Many thanks to everyone who was there on the day, particularly to Ruth Hegarty and Abigail Colleran in the Euro-Toques office who had to do all the organisation while I was swanning around France.