For the food lover, the idea of certain cuts of beef being cooked without bones is like Fred without Ginger, or Rogers without Hart: passable, but nowhere near as good or as entrancing as the two in combination.
"Beef bones are usable for the marrow they contain and for making stock", writes the American culinary authority, Richard Olney. "In addition, beef roasted on the bone is juicier and has more flavour than the same cut with the bones removed, since cutting out the bones severs the muscle fibres and allows valuable juices to escape".
Mr Micheal O Crualaoi, chairman of the Irish Quality Butchers' Association, points out that it is the bigger joints of beef which need the bone for flavour - large T-bone steaks and sirloin and rib roasts. And while he finds a demand at this time of year for beef marrowbones for making soups and stocks, he also expresses the common view of Irish butchers that most beef is sold off the bone. "Out of approximately 2,400 lbs of beef sold in the shop each week, only about 120 lbs will be bone-in beef". Already, the modern tendency to denude meat of its fat has diminished its flavour when cooked. To insist that no cuts of beef should be sold with bones attached would make the stuff scarcely worth bothering about.
And, at a stroke, the ban threatens a large swathe of culinary history, in particular British culinary history.