Sir, - I was horrified to read in your otherwise excellent newspaper the banner headline "Cattle `change sex' to get EU money" (The Irish Times, December 5th). This latest worrying trend of "transexual cattle" appears to have been discovered following a perusal of the Comptroller and Auditor General's 1996 Accounts. This raises urgent questions which must be answered:
Who performs these bovine sexchange operations?
Where do cattle cash their Eurocheques?
What do the cattle then do with their money?
These types of farmyard frolics were never allowed in De Valera's time - Dr J. C. McQuaid saw to that - and they should not be allowed today either. It is yet a further example of the decline in moral standards in this country. The current Minister for T-boneless Steaks and Black Puddings must act immediately to halt this bovine debauchery - by referendum if necessary. He should also provide counselling services for gender-bending cattle - funded, of course, from you-know-where.
Failure to stop this rot will unquestionably lead to further declines in bovine moral standards. Could we tolerate homosexual bulls, lesbian heifers, condoms for bulls (on the pretext of halting the spread of BSE), transvestite bullocks? If the Minister does not act quickly, in a few short years from now we could be faced with the bovine form of mad human disease.
With apologies to the late Donal Foley. - Yours, etc.,
From D. J. O'Gorman PC
Oola, Co Limerick.