A sometimes surrealistic view of the

foreign fodder resting

tenderly on your plate

Don’t be so sure when you dig your teeth into that luscious, home-made salad this summer that it really is home grown. It seems there is quite a racket going on at this moment in time of our blistering summer that even the origin of a solitary vegetable resting tenderly on your plate cannot be ascertained.

Take tomatoes, for example. They are synonymous with summer fare on every kitchen or restaurant table. Maltese tomatoes, especially, are renowned for their natural goodness and adaptability when it comes to putting their richness to good use as both a traditional spread and gastronomic embellishment. But how certain can one be that most of the tomatoes being sold to us as local produce are actually sown, grown and harvested by Maltese farmers of the European Union age?

I can swear the last time I stabbed a carnival-red tomato – a mere two days ago – I could hear it scream in Chinese. Not that I could understand a single word it was shrieking at me. What’s murder in Chinese? But this sinking feeling that we are all being taken for a ride seems to increase the temptation to descend to such surrealistic depths.

Maltese farmers and their organisations have been put in quite a spot. Not only do they have to live through the seemingly on-going nightmare of one day finding their ancient lands taken from them for development, but their excellent produce is now being unfairly downgraded to anonymity and, even, humiliation while the importers and their precious middlemen flood the market with inferior-quality products from such far-flung places as China and other Asian markets.

The need to satisfy market demands cannot be ignored, especially during the summer months when the population of these islands grows to very discomforting proportions. But to fake the imported stuff – tomatoes, potatoes, garlic and onions, all kinds of vegetables and various varieties of fruit now swamping the market –-- by presenting it as “local produce” is an insult to the farming community and consumers alike.

Maltese produce, undoubtedly fresher and sweeter, has its own niche in the local market. As it should have, even if it means that people need to pay more for its unique properties and genuineness. But to bring in the Chinese and Sicilian products and then sell them under the Maltese label and, even worse, at prices normally reserved for Maltese produce, is downright deception and an exercise in sheer fraud.

EU membership has rightly opened the floodgates to certain imports, but hoodwinking the public has, and should have, nothing to do with it. Why do our authorities have to be regularly caught with their pants down over such important issues? If they are so helpless when it comes to protecting the consumer with regard to the simple choice of either knowingly eating a Maltese tomato or eating a Chinese tomato that is camouflaged as a Maltese one, then one is rightly terrified to even think what is happening in the much more serious field of drugs and pharmaceutical products where importation is not only a necessity but also a sensitive and professional prerequisite.

There seems to be the general feeling that as long as we can keep the market flooded and chock-a-block with imports (as opposed to those Mintoffian days, so goes the feeble innuendo, when we had import restrictions galore) it’s OK. It is certainly not OK to cheat and to expect the public to pay for foreign products that have been fraudulently labelled as local, and it is outrageous on the part of the authorities to be caught as helpless as the consumers they are supposed to be protecting. What is holding them from taking all the necessary action? What are the consumer organisations doing about it?

Sadly, the same story has been occurring in connection with the local wine industry. EU membership has not, at least as yet, made sure we are drinking what is stated on the adjective-laden labels that we are drinking. When is a Maltese wine truly Maltese? When it is produced from imported grapes or from home-grown vines?

There are some really good local wines on the market and it is no longer an embarrassment to order one in the presence of connoisseurs. Vineyards have also been sprouting all over the place where there is arable land still left to nurture, but certainly not enough to justify the amazing number of so-called local wine products on the market.

What should one do in such an event? Scream back at them… in Maltese. They wouldn’t understand you, of course.