Food group says Irish milk is safe

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland has moved to reassure Irish consumers about the risks from a bacterium which is rarely found in milk but may evade pasteurisation. This follows the British government decision to order new checks on raw milk after initial tests indicated that mycobacterium paratuberculosis is surviving the heat-treatment process.

The bacterium causes Johne's disease in cattle and in some cases milk from affected cows may contain the organism which has been linked to Crohn's disease in humans, though there is no scientific proof whatsoever of the connection. "However, its presence in Irish cattle is at a very low level," the FSAI's chief executive, Dr Patrick Wall, stressed.

Only 12 cases were diagnosed in 1997 out of a total Irish cattle population of 7.6 million, and the Department of Agriculture requires that animals diagnosed with the disease are removed from the foodchain. This contrasts with Holland, where up to 20 per cent of herds can show clinical infection, and the UK, where 755 cases were diagnosed in 1995.

"This puts the Irish position clearly in perspective. Moreover, routine pasteurisation has been shown to effectively kill the organism when present at low levels," Dr Wall said. An FSAI expert group has examined the potential human link recently and concluded that at present it has not been established that this organism causes Crohn's disease.

The Irish Dairy Industries Association welcomed Dr Wall's statement which, it said, was "very reassuring to both Irish consumers and the Irish dairy sector". Its spokesman, Mr Pat Ivory of IBEC, said recent studies in the US and Australia had found that pasteurisation was more effective in killing the bacterium than pilot research in Britain indicated. Ireland produces 1.2 billion gallons of milk a year, of which 120 million gallons is consumed as liquid milk on the home market, the highest level of consumption in the EU. While the Republic is a large exporter of dairy products, in recent years there has been an increase in dairy imports by British multiples with such products appearing a lot more frequently on Irish supermarket shelves.