THE MINISTER for Agriculture, Mr Yates, will move to protect the £200 million beef trade with Britain following the latest scare that humans could contract mad cow disease from eating infected.
The British government insisted yesterday that British beef could still be "eaten with confidence", despite announcing a package of emergency safety and research measures after new scientific evidence linked the disease to humans.
But Irish industry sources told The Irish Times that one major UK supermarket chain has already requested some Irish meat factories to stop deboning beef for it - at least temporarily.
Mr Yates claimed the UK had more problems in one day than Ireland had had in the six years since the disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), was identified. However, Mr Yates added, he was viewing yesterday's developments in the UK "in a very serious way".
In a statement to the House of Commons, the British Health Secretary, Mr Stephen Dorrell, admitted that scientists had now identified a "previously unrecognised and consistent disease pattern" after investigating the deaths of 10 young people suffering from Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), the human form of mad cow disease.
Mr Dorrell said scientists believed that the "most likely" cause of these 10 cases of CJD was eating certain types of offal before these were banned in 1989.
However, the Minister stressed that scientists believed the there was no scientific proof that BSE could be passed to humans through beef. "The risk from eating beef is now likely to be extremely small and there is no need to revise advice on the safety of milk", he said.
After announcing that £4.5 million would be set aside to fund further "urgent" scientific research to establish whether there is a link between BSE and CJD, Mr Dorrell said it was important that the British government did not over react to the new findings.
In an unusual move, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Douglas Hogg, also made a statement to the Commons, outlining further safety measures. Mr Hogg said meat and bonemeal would now be banned from use in the feed for all farm animals.
Later at a packed press conference, Dr Robert Will, head of the CJD unit in Edinburgh, where the 10 cases of the new strain were identified, said it seemed to affect younger people, with the average age being 27 1/2, compared to 63 in other CJD cases.
The British Meat and Livestock Commission also predicted that the scare could bring fresh demands from continental European countries for a ban on the export of British beef.
Mr Yates said BSE scares in Britain were not new and he had made a presentation in the Irish Embassy in London earlier this year to UK supermarket chains, including Sainsbury, Tesco and Asda. It was made clear to the buyers from these chains that Irish beef was produced under much more stringent conditions than in the UK. "Irish beef is a safe product", Mr Yates said.
The IFA president, Mr John Donnelly, called for a co ordinated response from the Government and An Bord Bia to protect Ireland's beef markets around the world.
An Bord Bia said in a statement that it was in continuous contact with all major retailers in Britain to promote Irish beef strongly and defend Ireland's market position.
A spokesman for Mr Larry Goodman, a major supplier of beef to UK supermarkets, said BSE scares is not an area the company comments on".