I bumped into my brother in the street and we talked about Fintan O'Toole's book on the beef tribunal. I told him to read it immediately. I myself had stopped both reading about the beef tribunal and eating beef in 1991, after a two-line thing in the Irish Times about cirrhotic calves' livers being packed by someone, somewhere in Ireland. My brother is a civil servant. He did not reel, gag, or clutch his throat. He said: 'Come on. You can't get cirrhosis by eating it in beef.'

LRB 3 August 1995 | PDF Download