The discovery of BSE in a 32- month-old animal in Northern Ireland is being blamed on maternal transmission of the disease as she was not exposed to contaminated meat-and-bone meal, the Northern authorities have said.
However, this is the third BSE case in animals born after August 1996 in the North, when controls protecting cattle from possible contamination of their feed became operable.
The victim, the calf of a cow slaughtered because she was more than 30 months old in 1999, posed no threat to human health as her carcass did not go into the food chain, according to the North's Department of Agriculture and the Food Standards Agency yesterday.
This is a setback for the beef industry in the North which had been getting to grips with the BSE problem and had brought the annual totals down to 50 last year. So far this year, the Department has confirmed, there have been only 18 cases of BSE and most new cases were found by active surveillance.
There were seven new cases of the disease found in the Republic this week, their ages reflecting the trend showing that BSE here is being found in a sub-set of older cows.
One 14-year-old, two 11-year-olds, two eight-year-olds, a seven-year-old and a six-year-old were discovered on farms in Monaghan (two), Galway, Mayo, Cavan, Longford and Waterford, bringing the year's total to 50.