Irish scientists are monitoring reports of an upsurge in the number of young cattle in Britain becoming infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
The British authorities believed they had the disease fully under control when it began to strictly enforce feed controls which would prevent animals being fed contaminated meat-and-bonemeal, in 1996.
There have been 77 cases of BSE in British cattle born after August 1996 but of these 49 were born in the past 12 months and eight in the past three weeks.
According to a report in the Guardian newspaper, British experts are troubled by the continuing rise in the number of animals born in the last year which should not have been exposed to contaminated feed.
The report said that this may delay the decision on whether or not to relax a 1996 ban on cattle meat from British animals over 30 months old being used in food.
Because of this ban the level of testing cattle in Britain for the disease is much lower than in other European countries like Ireland where all animals over 30-month- old destined for the foodchain and a large proportion of casualty and sick animals are routinely tested for the disease.
Feed recycling was the principal cause for the speed at which the epidemic spiralled out of control in the UK until the early 1990s. There were 36,700 cases there in 1992, compared with just over 500 so far this year. Feed rules were introduced in 1988 but the long incubation period of the disease, often four to five years, sometimes more, meant they took a long time to have an effect.
The British authorities are understood to be considering extending their testing programme, aiming it at younger animals in their national herd of 13 million cattle.
They suspect the rise in the number of young animals being infected may be linked to contaminated feed imported into Britain before the EU imposed a ban on feeding meat-and-bonemeal to pigs and poultry in January 2001.
The weekly BSE returns here for last week showed three new cases of the disease, two in nine-year-old cows and the third in an eight-year-old animal.
These brought the number of BSE cases for 2003 to 170 so far this year compared to 313 cases by this time last year in the Irish herd of an estimated seven million animals.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture and Food said last night that it was aware that the British authorities were carrying out an intensive study into a total of 59 cases of BSE born since the full implementation of the feed ban there.
He said the study was due out shortly and supported the view of just how little was known about BSE and the need for the continuation of strict controls which are in place here at production and processing levels.
He said there had been three cases detected in young animals born in the Republic since the controls on feeding meat-and-bonemeal became optimally stable from January 1st, 1998.