Imperative cooking: the Labour threat
HOW will Imperative Cooks fare under a possible Labour government? Badly. The socialists are already committed to a super- nann Ying body called a Food Standards Agency. They will also have a minister for public health, probably Kevin Barron. He has already made his name trying to intro- duce a ban on cigarette advertisements. TheLy is committed to such a ban; a Case of gesture politics, since the evidence does not show it would reduce smoking rates. A party with no distinct policies will make many more such gestures. But, above all, watch that slippery term public health'. It is the main banner under Which are smuggled measures which inter- fere with consumer choice. Another is worming' and 'protecting the consumer' -- whether we wish the precise 'protec- tions' or not. I heard two of the advocates of the Agen- eY the other day on the wireless while driv- ing home. The Analysis programme was about the consumer culture which the dis- cussers all agreed we live in. Miss Sheila McKechnie from the Consumers' Associa- tion wanted the Government to intrude More. Dr Tim Lang, once of the London Food Commission, then the Food Commis- sion, then Parents for Safe Food, now at one of the polytechnics called a 'university', looked forward to the day when we would all be not so much consumers as 'citizens'. Does he know what the last unfortunate movement to inflict that status on its People led to? And I wonder if these lobbies know how they are despised by certain consumers such as Imperative Cooks. They talk as if they speak for everyone but they don't speak for us. Indeed their measures will scupper our consumer's choice. Even worse, I am not convinced they know any- thing about the joys of sophisticated eating. Their speciality is complaining, moaning and scaring about food, poor dears. Then there was Anthony Giddens, the new director of the LSE on whom the media have been fawning because he has written more pages of sociology than any- one else M the world. Mr Giddens moaned that having lots of consumer goods was not enough. What about the 20 per cent of the Population that did not have enough money to participate in the consumer soci- ety? Mr Giddens, you should be ashamed. Everyone knows that the going rhetorical rate for the poor is at least a quarter, better still a third of the population.
Waiting for me at home were ten fat pigeons, ready to be plucked, cleaned and eventually stewed or spatchcocked and flash-fried. There is a glut of pigeons at the time of writing. All Imperative Cooks know this. Even those who don't shoot have seen them on the fields. So the pigeons, in the feather — after all, they take all of three minutes to pluck and clean — were being sold for 15p each. I would have thought that cheap enough for the most downtrod- den of the poor. But of course the other reason there is a glut is that the poor are too fussy, lazy, ignorant or incompetent to buy and prepare them, just like the rich. The greengrocer was selling off a glut of tomatoes at 20p a pound, some slightly bruised but fine for stuffing with bread- crumbs, garlic and parsley. This glut is part- ly seasonal and partly, I suspect, due to holding the fruit in cold storage. They sud- denly deteriorate when warmed up. Soon there will be a glut of fish as the waters warm up. Over the year, the poor who live near the coast will find herrings, sprats, plaice, dabs, mackerel all being sold straight from boats or by quaysides. Last week Gloria, who keeps geese, ducks and hens, called. She had boxes full of goose fat, turkey giblets and goose liver — yes, that is what I wrote, foie d'oie. They were frozen. They had been rejected by the Christmas customers who had bought her birds. Again, a few pence for a feast. And the ducks are now in lay, huge Aylesbury eggs. Two would cost each member of the huddled masses 30p. In fact I've just knocked a brace off, with home-made bread dunked into the thick, sticky, orange yolks. When it comes to food, it is not poverty that stops people 'participating'.
Now what would more government inter- vention do to all this good grub? What would the ci-devant Dr, now Citoyen, Lang, Citoyenne McKechnie and assorted agen- cies, public health ministers and other Chauvelins do to the pigeons, tomatoes, sprats and eggs? Already fishermen who sell from the boat are hounded by the food police and other bureaucrats. Wild birds and game will come under increasing con- trols, especially the sale of them hung and intact. Would any properly puffed-up offi- cial be able to tolerate the greengrocer sell- ing off tomatoes cheaply because they are confessedly starting to rot?
Readers of this column have already seen slaughterhouses shut down, butchers thrown out of their livelihoods, egg farm- ers ruined, selected offals banned. There is now the demand that the Environmen- tal Health Officers be allowed, like Chau- velin's Committee of Public Safety, to close down shops on mere suspicion of threatening public health. Once the Agen- cy and its loyal servants get to work, the drive to denounce, spread public alarm, then shut and stop all that is good and traditional in food will be unstoppable. And it will justify itself by the rhetoric of consumer activism and public health that the Langs and McKechnies have done so much to promote.
As for the poor, the effect of continued regulation will be, as always, to drive up prices and concentrate ownership. These lefties know even less about economics than they do about good eating. Rich and poor will have less choice; small traders will close; all that is individual, traditional, non- standard and unmonitored will be under siege; and no doubt gluts, an offence to the tidy bureaucratic mind, will be flattened. Whenever these food activists make their silly demands, all I can hear is the sound of knitting.
Digby Anderson
`I'm afraid you're going to need to wear glass.'
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