From farm to consumer, we need to see the bigger picture to ensure food is both nutritious and safe, according to Owen Brennan, Executive Chairman of the Devenish Group.
When it comes to tackling issues in the food industry, Owen Brennan cuts quickly to the chase: from farmer to consumer, we need to stop looking at food as a commodity and instead see it is a source of nutrition.
“The words food and commodity don’t fit together,” says Owen, a co-founder of Belfast-based agri-tech business and animal feed manufacturer Devenish Nutrition. “Food is elemental. It is at the level of water and fresh air. While I am very much for affordability, if we go down the ‘cheapest price’ route, it leads us into all sorts of problems with sustainability.”
Growing up on the family farm in Carlow, Owen developed an interest in food production, and he studied agriculture at the now-closed Warrenstown College in Co Meath and University College Dublin before working as a nutritionist.
In 1997, Owen and two colleagues bought Devenish. Since then, the company has expanded to include manufacturing sites in the Northern Ireland, Britain and the US, and has established a presence in the Middle East.
“Agriculture and food is a pretty good place to be,” says Owen. “Anything that preoccupies people at least three times a day, 365 days a year, would strike you as being something of real significance.”
However, he stresses that the abiding notion of food being cheap and plentiful needs to be challenged, particularly in light of global population growth and dwindling resources. And even in economically challenging times, food quality and respect for the environment should be non-negotiable.
“Nutrition and health are not demarcated, separate issues, they are a continuum,” says Owen. “There’s a lot of noise out there about cost, but you can choose to buy good food very affordably.”
A former president of the Northern Ireland Grain Trade Association and a former chairman of the Livestock and Meat Commission, Owen praises the work done by these and other organisations through education programmes directed not just at schools and the community, but also at farmers and suppliers. “We have been highlighting to people they are not in the farming business, they are in the food business,” he says.
Seeing the value of food as a source of nutrition – with cost as just one element of that value – could help everyone in the chain to make the connection between food and health in a more meaningful way, according to Owen.
Owen’s life and likes
Lives: County Meath, three miles from Slane, which Owen says is a beautiful part of Ireland
Hobbies: Fishing, shooting, hunting and any horse-related sports
Pets: Eight dogs
Favourite type of book: History. Owen is currently reading about Napoleon
Favourite music: A wide range from Handel’s Messiah to Johnny Cash
Interesting fact: Owen plans to do a sponsored trek in Southern Ethiopia next November, to raise funds for Farm Africa, a charity that works on community projects from aquaculture to environmental renewal. Separately, Devenish has a partnership with Farm Africa to help farmers in Uganda establish pig production enterprises.
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