"Irish food and ingredients is world class / world leading / best in the word". According to who?

The pigs comment is pretty ridiculous, alright.

Not only are the conditions in which pigs in Ireland are kept awful, the pork from these animals is really bland and tasteless, too.

Obviously, there are freerange exceptions to this but it's very much a minority. I won't eat supermarket pork anymore - I'd rather eat tofu!

I'm lucky in that my butcher sources really good pork (that's not sold as freerange, but is nothing like your average pork) and also, fairly regularly, has freerange pork. The freerange is pricey but seriously delicious.

And I suppose our beef has 300% less of a carbon footprint than any other beef anywhere else, too? 😂

I'm sorry, but keeping pigs indoors 24/7 is not high welfare, no matter how shiny and high tech the factory.

And what about the product? It's bland and has poor texture. Irish mass produced pork is simply not a world class product, or even a good product and anyone claiming otherwise doesn't understand what good meat is.

I suspect that you've never had a decent, freerange pork chop. If you had, you wouldn't be defending factory pork. Have you had freerange pork?

Also our injection, wet curing of bacon hides a lot. Our mass produced bacon actually tastes OK - but no better than factory bacon from anywhere else.

It may be produced in a world class manner, but it's a bog standard product. It's not high quality by any decent food standards. It really isn't anything to be proud of, imo.

British pork is, generally, far, far better, in my experience.

So we are great at producing massive amounts of tasteless, cheap pork. Let's celebrate 😂

In my opinion, this is exactly what we shouldn't be doing if we want to maintain Ireland's reputation as a quality food producer, internationally.

Perhaps we could become world leaders in producing chicken nuggets, too?

I give up. Clearly we are discussing completely different things.

I am talking about maintaining and enhancing Ireland's reputation as a producer of high quality, high value foodstuffs.

All you appear to be interested in is the commercial export of intensely produced, low value, mass market products.

I take no pride in the fact that we are, apparently, expert at making cheap pork and chicken, processed products.

If you represent the average Irish farmer, I despair for the future of Irish agriculture in this race to the bottom.

Because we are very good at processing meat at a price that allows McD’s to make a good margin on it.

Have you? I'd be in one regularly. Often seen piglets crushed by sows. Also, it's common to see pigs eating each other, generally the weakling and often while alive. It's just accepted. Intensive pig farming is deeply cruel and always has been. Don't be kidding yourself.

I dunno. The same person suggested that if we imprisoned homeless people in sheds, slaughtered them and ate them; that it would be better than the current system. A bit delusional, I think.

Yes.

The poster in question actually said the following. Hence, my delusional comment.

"You clearly have never visited a piggery in Ireland, they are high tech, high welfare facilities. If we treated the homeless like we do the pigs it would be a better country"

You may argue that the poster didn't mean that literally. But what was the point of that comment? Animal welfare and homelessness are serious issues. People can't make outrageous, offensive, incorrect comments and not expect some backlash from them.

Agree re potatoes.

For a country so richly associated with the humble spud, we have little variety of potatoes and little enough collective knowledge of varieties and their uses.

France, for instance, seems to have way more varieties and the knowledge to know their best uses.

As long at they are floury, Irish people seem to be happy.

Get used to it because this is only going to get worse.

Sysco and their bland mass produced shyte is a central cause of this.

Shortage of chefs particularly Irish ones means they can pick and choose easy half prepped dishes with little cheffing in them. Everything with chips or **** tasteless mash. "I don't do desserts" so all those are bought in.

Most of the best quality food is exported or used in high end restaurants.

In future we'll be like the US - high quality food at high end prices and the rest garbage.

I hope you realise that you completely misinterpreted that post, and the poster was in fact rating Australia ahead of Ireland?

IMHO the spud is just a conduit for our world class butter!

🙄

Lol indeed.

Our dairy produce is excellent, no doubt. But what do you know about Brittany's dairy industry, Romania's Austria's, Japan's. Have you compared the products? While I disagree with a lot of the OP's point, just because you say it's the best, does not make it so.

Also, you, like someone else, you included pork amongst ireland"s "the best", meat products. That's just clear nonsense. It seems that you are happy to claim that everything Irish is "the best". This is exactly what has the op so insenced - people claiming that Irish everything is "the best", with zero evidence.

Yes, our beef and lamb is excellent. So is lots of other people's beef and lamb. Have you sought out other high quality meats for comparison? Japanese beef, Welsh lamb etc etc

Oats? What do you know about international oat production. Only 25% of our oats are for the human food chain. What backs up your claim?

Honestly, I've never heard anyone claim that there's anything special about our barley. How is 'the best "?

Wheat, you are joking here surely. A quick Google tells me :

" The vast majority (>90%) of the national wheat crop is sold as feed grain, used for cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. Only about 5% of the national crop grown is classified as ‘milling wheat’ and is used in the retail household flour market."

So, we grow the best wheat in the world but we give 90% of it to animals?.

Really we produce some great produce but blindly claiming that everything Irish is," the best " is just silly and lacks credibility under any kind of scrutiny!