Brochures promoting cow pat tossing recalled

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OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - Oklahoma tourism officials have recalled about 200,000 brochures with images of activities that may have seemed uninviting to some travellers, such as cow manure tossing and re-enacting Confederate battles.


The pamphlet, called 2005 Annual Events Guide, featured events and activities throughout Oklahoma. It was also riddled with spelling, grammatical and factual mistakes.


"We discovered the material in the event guide was culturally insensitive and contained errors," said state tourism director Rob Gray on Wednesday.


One item that may not have helped was a photo of an event in which lumps of cow manure are thrown as a part of a contest in the town of Beaver, in western Oklahoma.


Another photo tourism officials found potentially objectionable showed Civil War re-enactors in Confederate uniforms firing cannons underneath a Confederate battle flag.


Confederate flags have been a flash point in U.S. politics as some have said they have racist overtones.


The guide had been produced by an employee who was no longer with the office, Gray said. He attributed the problems to a lack of oversight.


"Images are powerful," Gray said. "They have to be selected with caution."