We strongly believe that, given recent developments, it is high time the Maltese hobza be given the status it deserves by registering and protecting its name, ingredients and the method of manufacture and presentation in the same manner as traditional products all over the European Union are being protected.

Bakeries which produce and sell the genuine Maltese hobza (without so-called flour treatment agents and other additives) should be awarded a formal recognised status, possibly identifiable with a logo. This will not only benefit us as consumers, but also those bakers who take pride in their product and who know there is a market for our much loved, but fast disappearing, hobza Maltija.

Despite the agreement reached with the Bakers' Co-operative on September 3 (to increase the subsidy and for the price of a loaf to be allowed to rise by 1c) Malta and Gozo still run the risk of losing one of their most valued treasures.

Both Government and Opposition appear to be convinced that the price of bread is of great political importance, and that to raise the price of a loaf risks political suicide. We suggest that with a bit of imagination (or what some would call lateral thinking) the genuine Maltese hobza can be saved.

It cannot have escaped readers' attention that, despite its unaltered appearance much (though not all) of our bread has become a poor shadow of the real thing. It has gone smooth, glutinous and shiny inside, with a plastic-like texture and bland taste. The characteristic 'holes' in the bread are no more and, sometimes, even the crust has lost its crispness. Mercifully, this is not uniformly the case. Many proud artisan Maltese and Gozitan bakers continue to bake the traditional Maltese loaf at great personal cost and a huge loss of income.

Paradoxically, what is known as fancy bread - made by the fast method, in various shapes and sizes, costs considerably more than the hobza made by the age-old, slow-rise method which consists of only flour, salt, water, simple yeast and tinsila - a piece of the previous day's dough.

Why should bread of inferior quality (despite its fancy name) cost more than the traditional loaf which is a product of hard-working, highly qualified artisans and has been produced for as long as any of us can remember and a great deal longer than that - since the times of the Knights, in fact?

The reason is that the archaic 1939 emergency regulations (enacted at the same time as the infamous rent laws) continue to dictate that the cost of our daily bread must be fixed and controlled. Yet, if Government and Opposition were to reach a bi-partisan agreement, the traditional hobza could be saved.

This would even give a tremendous boost to tourism because, by their own accounts, one of the experiences tourists most enjoy is our local bread. Proof of this can be seen by a visit to Google which gives 926,000 entries for "Malta Bread", 357,000 for "Maltese Bread" and even 874 for "hobz Malti"! Go to the Delia Smith UK Website and you will find a daily debate is going on among people who have been to Malta and Gozo and who rave about our bread and exchange their views on it and how to make it in a domestic oven and where to find the best recipes.

So what is the solution? Many bakers are beginning to abandon traditional baking because their appeals to the government to allow the cost of bread to rise freely have not been heeded. A number of them have been forced to produce inferior bread, which resembles the real thing but requires so-called flour improvers to reduce the rising time, and increase its keeping qualities. Thus we have bread produced at several times the speed with considerably less labour.

The solution is only too clear. Let the price of the ersatz (imitation) hobza which only looks like the real thing be fixed and controlled (if you must) but, at the same time, encourage our bakers to continue (or go back to) producing the true hobza with its price rising accordingly (to at least, if not more than, the price of "fancy bread"), thus honouring the art, the long hours and the dedicated labour which goes into it.

This is what is happening throughout the rest of Europe (even in France) where the quick-rise, adulterated loaf has become almost the norm, but where simultaneously, there is a growing and vociferous demand for traditional, slow-rise bread for which people are prepared to pay more. In our islands an even more enlightened solution would be to abandon price controls on bread altogether - since World War II ended some time ago.

We are not against bakers producing and selling bread of any kind, shape or form, and quality permitted by law, but we do insist that only the genuine hobz Malti should be permitted to be marketed and sold under that name.