The number of cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the Republic continues to increase sharply. Nine new cases of the disease were confirmed last week by the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development.
The number of infected animals has risen to 125 so far this year, which compares unfavourably with the situation when only 87 cases had been confirmed at this time last year.
This brings the total number identified in the Irish herd since 1989, when the disease was first identified, to 722 cases. In 1989-96, the annual number of cases remained under 20 each year.
Since then, when a possible link between BSE and CJD was announced in London, the annual count has continued to rise, reaching 150 last year.
Scientists had predicted a sharp increase in the number of cases as last July the Department began to seek out cases of the disease rather than wait for them to be reported.
This move to active surveillance by testing casualty animals and animals going to knackeries, saw the monthly total for the disease jump from an average of 6.5 cases in the February/July period to 41 in August.
This trend has been continuing through September, as more cases are being detected in animals which would not have been tested before now as they were not going into the human food chain.
There was one positive aspect to last week's figures. All the animals identified were aged six years or more. This means the feeding controls put in place early in 1997 appear to have worked.
Up until then there had been continuing contamination of cattle feed in premises which were compounding feed for both cattle and pigs and poultry. Meat and bonemeal was still being fed to pigs and poultry. This was banned by the EU early this year.
Scientists in Britain found that even minute quantities of BSE-infected meat and bonemeal from the compounding equipment in feed plants was sufficient to cause continuing cases of BSE.
Both here and in Britain, the manufacture of cattle feed and pig and poultry rations was segregated, and plants were not allowed to produce both in the same mill. Since then there has been a sharp decline to animals aged over five years.
Last week's cases were in a seven-year-old and a six-year-old cow in Co Kerry, in six-year-old cows in Clare, Monaghan, Longford and in Cork and in seven-year-old animals in Galway, Mayo and Limerick.
Japan's agriculture ministry has been attempting to trace the meat and bonemeal produced from the carcasses of the country's first suspect case of BSE. It was turned into pig and poultry feed in a factory north of Tokyo and sent to a location close to Osaka.