The sight of the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, lugging a suck calf through Temple Bar yesterday morning on the end of a rope raised a few eyebrows in trendy Dublin.
The fact that he was being followed by a man carrying a black lamb also caused some confusion outside the Irish Film Institute before noon.
However, when it emerged that it was all in aid of raising awareness of the economic importance of food and farming in primary schools, people began to relax.
The Minister had come to launch the Agri-Aware organisation's video, "Agriculture - Cool or What?", before an invited audience which included the calf and the lamb at the Irish Film Institute.
The €100,000 promotion centres on an animated educational video and learning kit to be distributed to the State's 3,300 primary schools.
It features a hapless TV reporter, "Dodo Dave", who sets out to discover the origin of his favourite foods on a journey which takes him into the darkest parts of rural Ireland to meet cows, pigs, sheep and farmers.
Launching the video, the Minister said that with 170,000 people employed on farms, agriculture was the most important indigenous industry in the country and it was important to explain this to schoolchildren in a manner which would appeal to them.