Supporting Scottish Food

Scottish food is great. Haggis is lovely (usually). Scottish grown veg, fruit, Scottish reared meat - excellent! But come on, Scottish food is'nt the only kind of good food. Realising that other cultures/countries food produce could benefit you will improve the health of the nation as long as you're not swamped by other country's food produceures wanting to make a quick buck for themselves.

I'm a big fan of the SNP. I heard some speeches on the radio by a couple of your politicians a few days ago - they seemed far more honest, forthright and less pretensious than any English politicians I've listened to for a while. (Yes I'm English by the way).

Keep up the good work.

Matt :-)

Scottish food at the premium end of the market is among the best in the world.  Aberdeen Angus beef, lamb, wild salmon & trout, excellent seafood and delicious berries, to name but a few products.  Let's keep it that way.

I am writing to ask that you please keep the quality and keep Scotland GM free.  In the U.S, evidence is growing to support the theory that GM crops are the reason for the drastic reduction in the bee population.  And Einstein told us that if the bees go we follow 4 years after.  Bees are essential to pollenate the plants at the start of our food chain.  Given the choice between nature and Monsanto, I'll take nature thank you.

I think we need to take a good hard look at the direction farming is going in.  We are now looking at the crazy situation where farmers could be growing our fuel (bio-fuel) and scientists are producing our food.  To compound the madness we DO know how to make a car engine which runs on water.  This is not a conspiracy theory, a gentleman in Germany has been driving around in a water fuelled BMW for 25 years.  I don't understand why we have to pretend that this is not possible. 

Regarding farmed salmon, I totally agree with the food critic who said "If I want to eat something pink and flabby I'll take Spam over farmed salmon any day".  Salmon is the king of fish, it should not be available alongside the fish-fingers selling at the same price.  I love smoked salmon and am quite happy to return to the days when it was a delicious, slightly expensive treat and get the real McCoy.  I recently searched for wild smoked salmon online and was disappointed to find only a few Scottish suppliers with more companies in England and Europe.

Not only is farmed salmon fatty and unappetising, by producing these fish we are endangering the wild fish (with cross breeding), contaminating waters with antibiotics and rotting leftover food and finally, we feed these farmed fish - fish! approximately 5 kilos of fish is needed to produce 1 kilo of farmed fish.

I understand this is a hard one for you to swallow because aquaculture has long been heralded as an essential Scottish industry.  With the disappearance of our shipyards, mines, most manufacturing, aluminium smelts, paper mills etc I know it is viewed as a saviour of communities in the Highlands and Islands but there are other alternatives.  I think the best plan is to keep Scotland green and clean with sparkling waters and scenery unspoiled by those unsightly fish tanks dotted along the West Coast.  We should stick to producing the highest quality food and drinks that we possibly can.

I agree with the reply by 'Wild Rover' above.

I believe Scotland has the opportunity to specialise in producing pure, natural food ingredients. I would ideally add organic to the GM free proposal wherever possible. I do not have an agricultural background but expect there are instances where organic is not currently viable; in these cases any deviation from organic should be minimised. If a fraction of the money used for research in petro-chemical products was used to develop organic solutions then going organic would become much more practical and competitive; the Scottish Government should do all it can help stimulate this research. Our farmers who are most exposed to the chemicals currently used on non organic farms should also benefit from less side effects.

Scottish ingredients should be used as much as possible in local restaurants and hotels and be sold in local shops reconnecting people with the local produce and reducing food miles.

In today's busy world everyone will not want to spend the time cooking from basic ingredients but ready made meals should be more regulated to omit unnecessary additives. This should include very clear labelling of individual products and products within ready made meals indicating their origin and purity so our farmers are not unfairly competing with food from abroad which are not produced to the same standards.

Some side effects of additives are already known including the relationship of some e numbers to hyper-activity; even monosodium glutamate, which can be organic, can have affects on some people which vary from migraines to changes in personality including increased aggression. The increase of these in foods over recent years may not be unrelated to increases in anti social behaviour. This may seem exaggerated but in recent studies the serving of better food in a prison resulted in considerable reduction in aggressive behaviour by the prisoners.

A considerable additional benefit would be the reduction of the use of petro-chemicals which are becoming scarcer and more expensive and this should also cut our carbon footprint.

So the purer the produce the better whether to make traditional Scottish meals or more exotic fair. I believe this would be to the benefit of the agricultural and food industry and to the people of Scotland.