the letter of fervent love for cattle

Around this time, Sayadaw started exhorting people not to eat cattle or oxen. He taught that oxen correspond to fathers who plow the land and give food to the family. Cows resemble mothers, who feed milk to their children. Human beings should not eat the meat of oxen and cows because they are so similar to parents. Sayadaw wrote many open letters at that time urging people to abstain from eating beef.

-- from "The Letter of Fervent Love for Cattle: or Gomettasa, an Admonitory Letter for the Abstention from Eating Beef,"

as found in A Short Biography of Ven. Ledi Sayadaw