THE Department of Agriculture has confirmed an outbreak of BSE in east Cork and is awaiting results on another suspected case in the same area. The 50 cows in the infected herd are to be slaughtered and post mortem tests carried out on the animals' brains, in line with the new guide lines introduced by the Minister for Agriculture.
Department officials said the outbreak was not significant. A former Fianna Fail minister for agriculture, Mr Joe Walsh TD, said Ireland had few cases compared with Britain. The incidents had been declining steadily since 1989, with 19 detected in 1994 and 16 last year.
Mr Walsh, who represents Cork South West, said the number of outbreaks in Ireland was tiny compared with Britain, where over 100,000 cases had been confirmed.
The sale of Irish beef on the British market has dropped by up to 25 per cent since a number of cases of a BSE type disease was reported in humans recently. To help counteract this drop in demand, Mr Yates has funded a Bord Bia link with the British meat marketing board to promote beef there.