Ireland is to retain much tighter controls than the rest of Europe on the use of meat and bonemeal as a fertiliser following the relaxation of EU rules.
Because of falling levels of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the EU, the use of meat and bonemeal from healthy animals was allowed in pet food last year. In the most recent easing of restrictions on the material which is thought to have caused BSE, European farmers will be allowed to use it as fertiliser.
While EU regulations will allow lands treated with meat and bonemeal fertiliser to be grazed by animals after 21 days, new Irish regulations will prevent the land being grazed for three years.
They allow the conditional use of organic fertilisers or soil improvers using only the safest level of meat and bonemeal, category three.
"In particular, farmed animals must not have access to land to which organic fertiliser or soil improver containing category three material has been applied for three years after it has been spread," it said. "The production of hay and silage and other ensiled crops from a crop grown on land on which an organic fertiliser or soil containing category three material has been spread during the previous 12 months, is also prohibited," said the regulations.
A Department of Agriculture spokesman said the regulations were being applied so as not to undermine the controls in place to eradicate BSE across the board.
"Our controls are in place to reassure the consumer and there can be no undermining of those," he said.
So far this year there have been only two cases of BSE found in the national herd. The most recent was in a 16-year-old cow in a Tipperary dairy herd.
The number of confirmed cases in 2006 was 41 compares with 69 cases for 2005, 126 cases in 2004, 182 cases in 2003 and 333 cases in 2002, the highest on record.
Irish scientists are confident that they will be able to eradicate the disease, first identified in Britain in the early 1980s, as it is now confined to an older subset of animals which may have had access to feed contaminated by infected meat and bonemeal.