Tasty!

摘要

Jonathan Dimbleby introduces the most delicious event in our calendar and explains why an organic future is more important than ever. The organic food awards are a celebration of the link between the people who produce food and those who enjoy it.A celebration that this year is bigger and better than ever, with more than 1000 entries from nearly 300 businesses. Congratulations to all the winners, and thank you to all those who took part. But first let me put these awards in context. We live in uncertain times, trapped in insecurity and anxiety, and with the knowledge that it will be a very long time, if at all, before we return to what we used to think of as normality. Now I might have said something like that before September 11, not about terrorism but about the devastation which now afflicts the farming community. A devastation that was trot caused by, but aggravated by, fool alia mouth disease. And, I would add, a devastation exacerbated by the failure of those in power inside and outside government to heed the Soil Association which took the lead in advocating vaccination instead of the massive and monstrous cull of healthy stock. A strategy (if we grace it with that term) which caused great and unnecessary suffering not only to farming families but to the wider community across rural Britain, which found that for month after month, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the countryside was indeed closed for business. If there is a silver lining, it is that the foot and mouth crisis has finally triggered a real debate about the way we produce our food and, more generally, about the need to create a sustainable agriculture in a sustainable social, economic and ecological environment.