When my daughter was seven-months-old I wrote an article discussing the surrealism of nursery rhymes and the strange messages contained within their prose, but it seems that the world of children's literature is far more volatile than I first imagined. It appears that a story based on the Three Little Pigs fairytale has been rejected by judges on a government agency awards panel because the subject matter could offend Muslims.

According to the BBC, the explanation from the judges was that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community… because the use of pigs raises cultural issues". My first reaction to the news story was what about the Jewish community? Once again the world is paying lip service to Muslims, pre-empting more religious outrage, displaying a blinkered ignorance to other faiths that also consider the pig to be an unclean animal.

Judaism dietary laws forbid the eating of flesh of swine or pork in any form, Seventh-day Adventists and some other fundamental Christian denominations also consider pork unclean as food, and, of course, Islam forbids the eating of pork. Muslims are being given constant special treatment concerning their faith, while other denominations are ignored, which I consider to be even worse than kowtowing to one religion.

However, these religions may all consider the pig to be an unclean animal to eat, but what's to stop the creature from appearing in books and films? It is not as though the Three Little Pigs are eating bacon sandwiches or a munching upon a pork chop, plus in the latest versions of the fairytale the Big Bad Wolf doesn't even eat the pigs - they escape to the brick house. The humanisation of animals does strange things to a child's mind, for example how many children would be happy to see a mouse in their bedroom, yet Mickey Mouse is a global phenomenon.

The decision of the judges on the Bett Award panel to suddenly decide that pigs are unsuitable for a children's book is suspicious to me, especially when you consider 1) the Three Little Pigs has been in popular culture for 300 years, and 2) children are inundated with famous pigs, including A.A. Milne's Piglet, Dick King-Smith's Babe, The Muppets' Miss Piggy and Porky Pig. Have the judges made this announcement merely to bring publicity to an award that wouldn't have otherwise appeared on the BBC?

The book at the heart of this controversy is a CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the Three Little Pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children, so it will be the parent who decides whether of not to buy it for their child. My daughter has many books in her bedroom, but she doesn't have all the books ever given to her because my wife and I disagreed with their content and quietly removed it. The parent is always going to censor and act as the moral guide for their child, so why did the judges suddenly begin acting as our protector?

There response just confuses me. A book was submitted for their award, but they felt it wasn't suitable, fine. However, why did they have to make their reasons public? They could have found another book to win and leave it at that, with no controversy, no accusations and left those responsible for the book free from having to defend themselves against allegations of racism.

One other twist of the knife from the judges was their attack on the title Three Little Cowboy Builders because they believe that the story could alienate the building trade. No, cowboy builders alienate the building trade, not professional builders, and if the judges truly believe that the book would give children the impression that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs, then pigs have truly taken to the skies.