As the number of countries banning imports of US beef continued to rise following the discovery of BSE there, the Irish Food Board said it was monitoring the possible fall-out from the development.
The confirmation of one case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy in an elderly cow in Washington State prompted an immediate ban by the major trading partners who buy the $3 billion worth of beef which the US exports annually.
Yesterday, a second herd in Washington State was quarantined. It contained a bull calf recently born to the BSE-infected cow which was slaughtered on December 9th.
Japan, South Korea and Mexico, the three top buyers of US beef, quickly suspended American beef imports. China, a potentially huge market for US beef, followed on Thursday, as did Russia. The Gulf Arab state of Qatar also banned US beef imports, as did neighbouring United Arab Emirates, a major regional trading and re-export hub.
A Department of Agriculture and Food spokesman in Dublin said no US beef was imported here and very little of it entered the EU because of the ban on hormone-produced beef.
Beef industry sources said it was unlikely that Ireland would benefit in any way from the problems faced by the US in international beef markets.
"The winners are likely to be the Australians and Latin American countries who claim to be free of the disease, and they will be able to pick up where the Americans have lost out," said one export plant marketing manager.
"However, in the overall scheme of things, this outbreak is bad news for the industry because it creates a climate of suspicion about beef, which hits everyone in the trade."
In Wall Street trading yesterday, there was some recovery for fast-food restaurants such as McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's, which saw stock prices fall on Wednesday.
A spokeswoman for An Bord Bia said the bans being imposed on imports of US beef should not affect Irish beef sales abroad because 80 per cent of these went to EU countries. "However, we are carefully monitoring the possible fallout from some of our own markets, like Russia, which has taken considerable tonnage of Irish beef in the past and still continues to take some," she said.
Russia was one of Ireland's largest outlets for beef until the collapse of the economy at the turn of the century. Following intensive lobbying Russia did, however, return to buying Irish beef but specified it would only take beef from specific counties where BSE levels were low.
Ireland is trying to encourage the beef trade with Egypt which for a time banned Irish exports because of the level of disease here.
BSE problems have been recurring in Europe since the disease was identified in Britain in the mid-1980s. Ireland has been concentrating its marketing effort on the EU markets and this week announced a drop of almost 50 per cent in BSE cases, to 183 animals.
The Bord Bia spokeswoman said Ireland did not export beef to the US but there was an export trade in pork ribs which would be unlikely to be hit by the BSE scare there.