The Department of Agriculture has admitted three additional cases of BSE were uncovered by its investigation of herds in which diseased animals have been found. The admission, in a Dail question, brings the 1997 total to date to 68, and it is now virtually certain the year's total will exceed the 74 cases last year.
The Department's policy, since the end of 1995, has been to examine the brains of all at-risk animals slaughtered, and during the examination of 4,453 cattle three more cases were found.
The "risk" animals from such herds are normally mature cows or so-called cohort animals, which were reared with the diseased cow or fed on the same diet. In 1996 the number of cases of BSE in Ireland jumped from an annual total of fewer than 20 to 74 and caused a major crisis in the beef industry.
Scientists at the Department of Agriculture have only admitted on one previous occasion that they have discovered new cases in follow-up investigations.
This was during the winter of 1995, when an additional case was found on a dairy farm in Co Limerick. This was recorded as Ireland's first multiple infection on a farm. The Department has not included this case in its running total, on the basis that the scientists issue figures for infected herds rather than numbers of cases.
It could not be established last night whether or not the three new cases of BSE are from herds in which an infected animal has already been found, or from herds not already hit by the disease.