Ireland is fast becoming the real Bull Island of Europe with a huge expansion in the number of bulls being reared for slaughter and export by Irish farmers.
Traditionally, this country has castrated its male cattle and these so-called steers or bullocks graze passively on open pasture.
Now, driven by the lure of high EU premiums for bulls, farmers are not castrating their young male cattle and are applying for the EU premium, which delivers more on the bull than the less well endowed bullock.
Farmers, it appears, are becoming quite bullish and Irish meat plants are currently processing 1,000 young bulls a week - double the throughput at the same time last year.
Farmers had applied for 57,000 premiums for young bulls up to the end of April. This also was double the number applied for in the same period in 1999.
A spokesman for An Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, confirmed the trend in bull production. He said it was being driven by the EU premium, which would reach its maximum in 2002.
He said the run on bulls was not market-driven because outlets for them were difficult unless those who were involved in production knew exactly what they were doing.
"They are difficult to handle. They must be kept in sheds but, most of all, farmers who want to get involved must be assured they have an outlet for them when they are ready for slaughter," he said.
"It is true that bulls grow bigger than steers and they can be up to 1 1/2 times heavier. It is also true that they grade better at factories. Bull production has no place for amateurs.
"But there is the problem about who is going to buy all this bull beef. There are some outlets in Italy and the Netherlands but our reputation is based on producing steers on grass," he said.
"Even the French, who produce more bulls than anyone else in Europe, used to send one-third of their production into EU intervention, export one-third and the rest was sold to manufacturing outlets," he said.
"We should think carefully about what we are doing in case we reach a situation where we are producing a lot of bull beef which no one will buy," he concluded.