Gardai and Civil Defence personnel were deployed yesterday to reinforce a foot-and-mouth restriction order in Co Louth. The move was prompted by concern about a suspected case of the disease in the area. Last night farmers and rural communities on the Cooley Peninsula were facing an anxious wait until the results of tests on samples are confirmed.
The Louth IFA chairman, Mr Raymond O'Malley, commented that if the tests were positive, "it will be a nightmare come true."
Preliminary results are expected this morning on tissue and blood samples taken from a sheep on a farm at Jenkinstown. The sheep was one of 200 ewes and lambs slaughtered as a precautionary measure by the Department of Agriculture on Tuesday night.
The decision to slaughter the flock was taken after a senior veterinary officer confirmed that one sheep which was lame also had blisters - symptoms consistent with foot-and-mouth infection.
He inspected the flock on Tuesday evening and officials began culling the animals at 9 p.m. All were in a field at Ravensdale, about a mile from the Ballymascanlon Hotel where the Department has located its Louth headquarters for the duration of the outbreak.
A spokesman for the Department yesterday stressed that all the measures implemented were "precautionary", and this was the 22nd time that samples had been sent for analysis to a foot-and-mouth reference laboratory in Britain. All the other scares had proved groundless.
The farmer involved is highly regarded and there is no suggestion of his being involved in the illegal importation of livestock. The carcass of the sheep was yesterday still in a field at Ravensdale. Both it and the Jenkinstown farm are within the 8 km exclusion zone established around the farm at Meigh, Co Armagh, where the North's only confirmed case of foot-and-mouth has occurred.
As part of a package of precautionary measures, the Department has also stopped issuing permits for the movement of livestock in Co Louth. No more will be issued until the all-clear is given.
If foot-and-mouth was confirmed, it is believed that every animal on the Cooley mountains would be culled, as well as all livestock on the 500 farms in Co Louth.
One possibility being explored last night was that the farmer had spread slurry or nitrogenous fertiliser in recent days and that the sheep may have been affected by this, resulting in it becoming lame and developing blisters.