The agriculture minister doubts legislation would be an effective way of preventing people being attacked by livestock.

Phil Gawne says animals are too unpredictable for farmers to be required to declare any of them 'safe' to be in fields with public footpaths.

Mr Gawne was speaking after the sister of a Colby woman, who was trampled by a herd of cows last week, called for farmers to be held legally responsible for the safety of people using public footpaths on their land.

The minister is all but ruling out that suggestion, but admits something must be done:

"I suppose the appeal we could put out to farmers is that if they have alternatives to fields with footpaths in, if they could put their cows and calves in those fields first, rather than the one with the footpath in.

"Whilst the cows get a little bit more adjusted to the calves and the calves get a bit bigger, and there's less of a perceived threat on the part of the cattle, then clearly that is something we would encourage farmers to do."