'Serve what we grow and pay what we owe'
published: Friday | April 2, 2004

THE EDITOR, Sir:

IF OUR local cows could read they would be blocking roads and throwing cow cakes, having been called inferior to foreign cows by persons in the hotel industry. All cows possess all the same designated parts. Beef is beef, any way you cut it. Plus the fact that unlike foreign cows which eat an assortment of waste products our cows still eat grass.

Jamaica has so many tasty dishes you can serve a different one every day of the week without repeating. There is a Jamaican restaurant in Port St Lucie, Florida, called Jerk City where 50 per cent of the customers are American. Why? They visited Jamaica and fell in love with our cooking. They came from miles to get jerk pork and curried goat. The worst thing about this snobbery of our local beef is the tax waiver granted to hotels to import Australian beef. The same Australia that is buying our bulls to beef up their stock.

If Dr. Omar Davies is going to give in to every special interest with a tax axe to grind he will never balance the budget. Since we love imports so much why not import some Internal Revenue Service agents from the USA? They know how to tax and collect. Because of the free trade agreement we cannot ban certain imports. But we can bar hotels or anybody else from serving anything but local cuisine. Tourists came here to enjoy our climate and culture. So give it to them. To survive we must eat what we grow, serve what we grow and pay what we owe.

I am, etc.,

SIDNEY ELLIOTT

Hialeah Drive

Kingston 19