In the latest mindless quest to produce cheap and tasteless food in vast quantities, the Ministry of Agriculture inaugurated a “state of the art” chicken farm in Qrendi, capable of slaughtering 1,200 birds per hour (June 27).

The first time I considered eating a frog’s leg, the chef told me: “Tastes like chicken”.

When I once questioned the taste of rabbit in a Maltese restaurant, the chef told me: “Tastes like chicken”.

The basic problem is that chicken doesn’t taste like chicken any longer – at least, not the way I remember it. We are now producing fish that don’t even taste like fish. And the fish farms perversely dilute the numbers of “wild” fish in local waters.

I prefer rabbit that tastes like rabbit, chicken like chicken, fish like fish and even frogs like frogs. These days, “tastes like chicken” means “tastes like paper”.

But if you feed foodstock on pellets and your animals never see the light of day or eat anything that might reasonably be described as “food”, the best you can expect is a plate piled high with stuff that tastes like pellets.

We read constantly of campaigns for better and more wholesome and healthy eating.

Does the ministry – even when aided (of course) by EU funds – consider that this is the way to go about achieving such an admirable and necessary aim?

Okay, yes – it happens everywhere. But in most European countries shoppers have a greater choice: free-range or factory food.

Malta (the bit that isn’t built on) is a market garden once surrounded by fish. Is it sloth, or greed, or both that means we have to exist on a diet of artificially produced fare?

There are well-meaning people around who are trying to promote Malta as “a gastronomic experience”. The only way they can achieve that nowadays is to depend on imported ingredients.