John Walsh was very careful talking to Joe Duffy. That morning, Michael McNiffe of the Irish Mirror had outed Mr Walsh as the man who bought the sheep in Carlisle which led to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth in South Armagh, and a strange dawn slaughtering in a southern factory.
The questions mounted. What was the profit margin? Why'd you do it, anyway? Mr Walsh risked becoming a convenient scapegoat. He said he was "a thousand per cent sorry", he couldn't sleep at night, and even prison might be preferable to what he was going through now.
Those of us who live in the towns have been spared the sight and stench of bodies burning. But another odour may be more perplexing. A faint smell of onions, the sort that brings tears to your eyes. So many layers of bureaucracy and complexity wrapped round the products called "agriculture" and "food", so many people whose businesses are starting to suffer in order to keep foot-and-mouth out.
The difference in style between the Irish and British governments could hardly be more striking. Either they are doing too little, or we are being over the top. Keeping Ireland disease-free has become a national crusade.
Irish people have voluntarily accepted extraordinary restrictions on their movements and behaviour, with groups queueing up to announce that their events are either cancelled or postponed. The Government has more or less successfully bonded the State - however briefly - for the first time in years.
North-South relations look equally interesting. The two Ministers, Joe Walsh and Brid Rodgers, speak to an island where damage to anyone can mean damage to all. The success of the mutual co-operation between them and their staffs offers an interesting insight into what could happen if the North-South Ministerial Council begins to explore its full potential.
Even though it may be tempting to ascribe Ireland's response as due to five degrees of separation from the land and those who work it, this is not an agricultural society, or an agriculturally driven economy.
Nor is there noticeable support for rural life, or for nature itself. The farming community is increasingly one that spends half its time working in day jobs in nearby towns. The countryside itself is being stripped of post offices, small schools and other community resources, as well as wildlife. You make more profit selling a site than grazing cattle on it.
The British government is usually ahead of the pack in spotting opportunities for national bonding and political gain. But only with a change of regulations that meant Cheltenham had to be postponed did it begin to reflect the sense of crisis that gripped its Irish peers.
Part of the British government's apparent slowness may be due to wider attitudes. The writer Richard Girling believes agriculture there is treated as "a spray-on product, not something that comes out of the accumulated experience of generations of farmers. . . Contempt for nature turns suddenly to grave ecological concern when landowners confront the possibility of ramblers disturbing their grouse moors, or of urban politicians interfering with the hunt."
THE foot-and-mouth outbreaks there confirm the gradual deterioration of farming practices. Yet when the two states go head-to-head, Ireland is in the ha'penny place - or was, until the Government finally began to introduce new legislation this week. Tagging systems to monitor animal movement in Britain were already in place, if not well policed.
Where the two states differ quite profoundly is in the relative priority given to consumers over producers. Food and agriculture are separate areas of responsibility in Britain, yielding British consumers greater protection under law, and greater access to information about what goes into their food products.
Mr Walsh and his Department have worked hard and may soon become heroes. But even if foot-and-mouth is kept out of this State, many aspects of the last two weeks suggest that the Department of Agriculture tends to lock the door after the horse has bolted, rather than before. Part of the new deal must be the complete departmental separation of responsibility as between food and agriculture.
Even with the crash course in animal husbandry and production which our mainly urban society has undertaken over the last fortnight, the layers of the onion we've been watching unpeel are not a great deal clearer. What is least clear is why and how successive governments and, in particular, the Department of Agriculture, have tolerated a system that is so patently open to abuse at many levels, that is highly bureaucratised but, until yesterday, in places highly unregulated.
What is worrying is the question of who benefits. Everything we've learned about the mystifying process of how animals are moved from place to place and factory to factory - with the system's blessing - must make consumers feel significantly less confident in the way the food chain is managed currently. Consumers deserve better transparency in exchange for the personal sacrifices so many have made. They've played their part. It's getting near payback time.
mruane@irish-times.ie