  We introduce a new class of actions for staggered quarks in lattice QCD which
significantly reduce flavour symmetry violations in the pion mass spectrum. An
action introduced by the MILC collaboration for the same purpose is seen to be
a special case. We discus how such actions arise from a systematic attempt to
reduce flavour symmetry violations in the weak coupling limit. It is shown that
for quenched lattice QCD at 6/g^2=5.7, representative actions of this class
give a considerable reduction in flavour symmetry violation over the standard
staggered action, and a significant reduction over what is achieved by the MILC
action.
