Following the controversy over the feeding of bonemeal (legally and under licence) to pigs produced on the farm run by the family of the Minister of State for food, Mr Ned O'Keeffe, a reader marched into her supermarket. She brought with her a packet of rashers and demanded they be returned to Mr O'Keeffe or put in the bin.
The man behind the counter asserted there was nothing wrong with the rashers, and it was wrong to throw rashers in the bin while there were people starving in the Third World.
When she demanded to know if he was saying that rashers from pigs fed on meat and bonemeal were good enough for people in the Third World, the man brought the dialogue to an end by giving her back her money. The story illustrates the sort of worries and suspicions which the BSE/vCJD controversy is creating.
The bonemeal fed to Mr O'Keeffe's pigs and those of 17 other producers who have been licensed to do so comes from animals which have already been passed fit for consumption by humans. No doubt, in most cases, these animals have already been sent into the human food chain. That may or may not be a comforting point.
If there is a problem, it is likely to be with animals born in or before 1996. All cases of BSE in cattle so far in Ireland have occurred in animals of this age. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has an agreement with the supermarkets that they will only sell meat from animals aged 30 months or younger.
It is possible that up to 1996 some animal feed may have contained bonemeal from Britain because the British continued to export it until then. It was extremely cheap and may have made its way across the Border and been fed to animals in a few cases. Some of it could have been fed illegally to cattle.
This is why supermarkets and butchers sell meat from younger animals. It is also the reason for the forthcoming EU scheme to buy up cattle more than 30 months old and slaughter them. Some cynics, it should be said, regard this as a stratagem to boost beef prices by slaughtering cattle and taking them out of the food chain.
And not just cynics. Dr Pat Wall, head of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, has described the scheme as a matter of supply and demand and not of food safety. He has criticised the inclusion in the scheme of some cattle born after 1996 that, he maintains, are BSE-free.
Whether or not it is an industry-boosting ploy, the scheme has the merit of taking out of the food chain the population of cattle (pre-1997) in which BSE has been found.
It is important to remember that out of a herd of eight million cattle, Ireland has found about 550 cases of BSE. Britain has found almost 180,000 cases in 12 million cattle.
Meat and bonemeal are not fed to poultry, because of a voluntary code of practice adopted by the industry. Any poultry-producer who wanted to depart from that code in the future would have to be licensed to do so.
Sheep don't appear to have BSE, although they have a similar disease called scrapie, and the disease in this species has been known since the early 18th century. This does not appear to pose any risk to human health.
One final point: a great many more people will die of starvation while we slaughter and burn cattle than have died of vCJD. To those countries our search for guaranteed food safety must appear downright bizarre.