The Deputy’s letter followed a formal application by the Jersey Potato Export Marketing Board for permission to build the factory, with associated visitor centre, restaurant and ancillary facilities, in Field 436, Rue de la Mare Ballam, near St John’s Manor.
The Deputy has already tabled questions about the project to the Environment president, Senator Philip Ozouf, which are due to be answered in the States.
As reported briefly in Saturday’s JEP, Deputy Le Main says in his letter that the proposed development has no place in the Jersey countryside.
‘I thought at first that it was an April Fool’s joke,’ he said to the JEP.
‘The Island has a premium potato and we can’t sell that, yet now we are proposing to sell a Jersey potato vodka.’ Deputy Le Main said he had had no contact with the originators of the project, the Jersey Potato Export Market Board.
He had written his letter and had tabled his questions without communicating with its chairman, Michael Cotillard.
‘A huge amount of time and money was spent in finding a blueprint for Jersey for the next decade, and anyone who supports this so-called agricultural proposal would be failing in their duty to protect the countryside as per the Island Plan as approved by the States in 2002,’ he says.
‘This is not an agricultural undertaking and it fails miserably in meeting Island Plan polices.
‘This miserable project does not have the majority support of the potato farming industry and is nothing more than pie in the sky.
How anyone can honestly stand up before the people of Jersey and propose such an operation alongside one of Jersey’s finest manor houses, in the middle of the countryside, is beyond me.
It is just madness.’
