More than 200,000 animals throughout the State will receive blood tests for foot-and-mouth disease during the coming months, the Minister for Agriculture has announced. More than 3,000 herds will be targeted for random testing in what the Minister described as a precautionary measure aimed at reassuring overseas markets that the Republic is free of the disease.
Speaking in Luxembourg, where he is attending a meeting of EU agriculture ministers, Mr Walsh said that most of the tests will be analysed at a laboratory in Abbotstown, Co Dublin. About 13,500 animals, mainly in Co Louth and areas where there have been suspected cases of the disease, have already undergone blood tests.
Mr Walsh stressed that the Republic was already free of foot-and-mouth disease as far as the EU was concerned. But he said that the new, precautionary measures were necessary to reassure markets elsewhere in the world. The Minister said that the country would remain on alert until 30 days after the last outbreak of the disease was reported in Britain.
Speaking after the farm ministers' meeting, EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Mr David Byrne said, on the basis of statistics, it appeared "the disease is tailing off. People are hopeful we're coming out of this now . . . We may well have cracked this one." The daily number of new cases in Britain was dropping off, after more than 478,000 animals were killed and burned to check the spread of the virus.
Twenty-six additional cases have been reported in the Netherlands, while no new outbreaks have been seen in the past four weeks in France and Ireland.
Britain's Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, told the meeting that the number of new cases had fallen from 40 a day to around 10 a day.
The ministers agreed that a ban on the use of meat-and-bonemeal, imposed in response to the BSE crisis, should be extended.
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