Another case of BSE has been found in a cow born after the EU ruled that Irish cattle feed controls were giving full protection against the spread of the disease in cattle.
The Department of Agriculture and Food confirmed yesterday that an animal born in 2001 had been found to have bovine spleniform encephalopathy (BSE).
It was a pedigree Friesian in a mixed herd of dairy and beef cattle in Co Monaghan. The animal was born in 2001 and was purchased in February 2005 from another dairy herd in Co Monaghan, in which the animal had been born and reared.
An investigation is already under way into where the animal may have been in contact with contaminated cattle feed, which has been identified as the way cattle become infected.
A Department spokesman said it was the 12th case of BSE to be diagnosed in animals born after 1997: four in 1998-born animals; seven in 1999-born animals; and one in a 2001-born animal. There have been 100 such cases in Britain.
The Department has conducted investigations into eight of the post-1997 cases, which were found in Kerry, Limerick, Cork, Cavan, Monaghan, Sligo, Leitrim and Mayo.
The spokesman said that while it was not possible to establish definitively the source of the disease in all the individual cases, investigators believed that in two the positive animals may have been exposed to infection through environmental contamination with carcass parts associated with the operation of a contiguous illegal knackery.
In these and other cases, trace amounts of land animal bone were found in areas used to store feed, and some of the farms involved had another case of BSE.
The spokesman said that, despite the discovery of the young case, the underlying trends for BSE remained positive, with a rapidly declining incidence.
He said there had been 26 cases in the first 19 weeks of 2005 compared with 59 for the same period in 2004, 92 in the same period in 2003 and 145 for the same period in 2002.
The 2005 figure represented reductions of 56 per cent on the 2004 figure and 82 per cent on the 2002 figure, he said.