Sir, - "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad", was a saying of the old Roman era. How true this is even today. The arrogance of man was never better illustrated than in the recent TV news bulletins ago showing carcasses of prime Irish beef being sprayed with green dye to ensure they could never be used for human consumption. This scandalous abuse of dumb animals and prime food for no other reason than sheer greed surely cried to heaven for a response.
We should not be surprised, even in this godless age, that the plague of foot-and-mouth disease now threatens to turn vast areas of countryside into green deserts, areas where the only living creatures will be the same stupid man, wondering what went wrong. We abuse nature at our peril. If we survive this crisis, and the Lord blesses us with flocks of healthy sheep and cattle, perhaps we will now learn to treat them with the respect rightly due to all His creatures.
Prime Irish beef was never intended to end up in "rendering plants" while half the world is starving, nor is it right that we should export our calves to a miserable existence in the vealcrates of France. For too long we have accepted slavishly the dictates of the European fat cats. The thousands of rotting animal carcasses piling up in British and Irish farmyards reminds us that we are not really masters of all that we survey, that God has entrusted these animals to our care and not as a commodity to be abused and dumped rather than shared with the world's poor. Maybe it's time we woke up and voted "No" for once to our new European masters. - Yours, etc.,
John F Murray, Garrylucas, Kinsale, Co Cork.