The Department of Agriculture was coming under increasing pressure last night following the discovery of yet another BSE-infected animal born after 1997. In that year, the ban on feeding meat and bonemeal to animals became operative.
The most recent case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy was found in aanimal born in February 1999, the fifth-youngest confirmed with the disease in the national herd.
The cow was a Friesian in a Kerry dairy herd and was born within 20 miles of the last diagnosed 1999-born animal, a bull, which was found on a Co Limerick farm within the last month.
Meat and bonemeal, thought to be the cause of the disease, was banned from cattle-feed in August 1990 but it took a further six years before the compounding of feed for cattle with that for pigs and poultry - which was allowed to contain meat and bonemeal - was segregated at mills.
Labour's spokeswoman on agriculture, Dr Mary Upton, was joined last night by Mr Peter Dargan of the Consumers' Association of Ireland in a fresh call to take control of food safety and animal feed away from the Department of Agriculture and set up a separate Department of Food.
Mr Dargan said it appeared the Department of Agriculture had a "death wish" in relation to the Irish beef industry by its apparent lack of controls on the feeding side.
"Food safety has to be taken away from the Department and given to a new department, preferably with a minister from urban Ireland, certainly not a man elected by Ireland's farmers," he said.
Calling for a swift and thorough investigation to dampen the fears of consumers, Dr Upton said we were clearly still at the bottom of the learning curve as regards BSE and CJD.
"Obviously the controls that are in place are not working. The fact that six animals born after the meat and bone-meal ban in 1996 have been detected so far this year is a cause for very serious concern", she said. "The proximity of this and the last case demands that all epidemiological investigations should establish the county of origin as well the county of detection. Also, it was never more necessary to separate out control of animal feed and food safety from the Department of Agriculture to a separate Department of Food."
Fine Gael's spokesman on agriculture, Mr Billy Timmins, said he was deeply concerned that a second three-year-old animal had tested positive for BSE within a three-week period.
He has called on the Minister for Agriculture to disclose immediately any information he has surrounding this latest case and the previous case in Limerick three weeks ago.
There have now been 333 cases of BSE in the national herd so far this year, the highest figure on record.