ged hurst

Ireland was built by the cow, written by the cow and paid for by the cow, and its government has modelled culling 200,000 of them. Ireland's oldest farm is a cattle ranch, the Céide Fields in Mayo, stone walls laid 5,500 years ago to keep cows, and the oldest field system known on earth. Ireland's great epic is a cattle raid, the Táin, a war between provinces fought over one brown bull. Ireland's sacred river is named for a cow, the Boyne, from Bóinn, the goddess of the white cows. Ireland's old law ran on cows, with a man's rank, his honour and the fine for killing him all priced in cattle. Ireland's richest market was a butter market, the Cork Butter Exchange, the largest in the world in its day. Ireland's best-known brand is butter, Kerrygold, the first Irish food brand to pass €1 billion, number two in America and number one in Germany. Ireland's farmland is grass, four fifths of it, on rain that hardly stops, which is why the cow and the plough never competed. Ireland today has more cattle than people, about 7 million to 5 million, producing some of the lowest-carbon milk in Europe. Every litre of that milk that disappears will be replaced by a litre from a herd with a bigger footprint somewhere else, and the only change the planet registers is a poorer Ireland. A country whose national epic is a cattle raid is now planning one against itself.