Despite the current tragic case of vCJD, Dr John O'Brien - the new food safety boss - is optimistic about the progress of Ireland's meat industry, writes Barry O'Halloran.

No sooner had Dr John O'Brien taken over the reins at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) than the country had its first confirmed case of variant CJD, the "human version" of mad cow disease.

Dr O'Brien appreciates that a young man is dying needlessly in a Dublin hospital as result of a meal he had over a decade ago. But he does point out that the State had expected at least one case to materialise.

"I'd like it if there wasn't a case of variant CJD, I'd like it if there wasn't a man in his 20s dying in a Dublin hospital," he says. "But we expected this to happen. There was a risk assessment done last year, and the risk assessment said that there would be one future case of variant CJD in Ireland.

"The figure is very low, but they used the same mathematics that the British used when they did their risk assessment. Based on that, we were able to say we expect one case for sure, but in a worst-case scenario, we may have 10 to 15 cases.

"I hope we don't have another one - the fact that we've had one doesn't imply that there will be a second or a third. It neither confirms nor denies the possibility of more cases."

At this point, it's impossible to say where the disease came from. It has an incubation period of 10 to 15 years, so the meal that led to its unfortunate sufferer's condition cannot be traced. The infected meat fell into one of three categories: Irish beef, British beef or processed meat (the last of these really covers a multitude).

"Back in that era - late-1980s, early-1990s - infected beef got into the food chain, we know that for sure," Dr O'Brien says. "Also back in that era, there was use of animal tissues that would have been infected, like brain and spinal cord. They got into the food chain, less in Ireland than in the UK."

It is those unsavoury-sounding items known as specified risk materials (SRMs) that are at the root of it, not the beef muscle that makes up ordinary cuts of meat. That is unless the animal from which those cuts are taken is infected by eating meal whose ingredients include SRMs.

But Dr O'Brien stresses that SRMs are no longer entering the food chain, either directly or indirectly. "At this time, I'm very very happy that controls are in place to prevent people eating infected material, " he says.

"There are three levels of control. The first level of control is at animal feed - you prevent the animals getting infected with BSE. That means you don't feed meat and bone meal to animals. Back in the 1980s and early-1990s, animals could be fed recycled brain and recycled spinal cord- their own recycled offal."

Since 1990, it's been illegal to feed offal to cows and, since 1998, to any farm animals in this country and the EU.

"We are policing that quite thoroughly across Europe," he says. The next level of control is animal health - cattle on farms are regularly monitored.

After that, all animals are examined before slaughter. Once they are killed, brain samples are taken from all those aged over 24 months (the disease does not affect young cattle) and analysed. Dr O'Brien points out that the vast majority of meat that we eat comes from the younger beasts.

The third level is control of SRMs. It's illegal to put these into the human food chain. All of them are removed from animals, marked with a blue dye and destroyed in a rendering plant. "We have a programme of audits that we are obliged to carry out to check that the regulations are being complied with," he says.

Mr O'Brien agrees that, in the past, the meat industry has never shown great respect for, or even paid attention to, regulations. "It's come to the point where the most regulated part of the food industry now is the meat industry, specifically the beef industry," he says.

"It's midway between food and pharmaceuticals now in terms of the amount of regulations it has to comply with.

"And rightly so, because it demonstrated that it couldn't self-regulate. That's the issue - trust was lost, self-regulation didn't work so compulsory regulation had to be introduced. We audit - we've got about 1,500 veterinary inspectors on the ground," he says.

Mr O'Brien's office was established as an independent entity because the same arm of Government, the Department of Agriculture and Food, was responsible for promoting, supporting and regulating the industry.

"You cannot have one agency trying to look after consumer health and the other trying to keep farmers happy," Dr O'Brien says, adding that he personally witnessed the fallout when the UK tried to do just that during the original BSE crisis in the 1990s. "There was a lack of willingness on the part of the UK ministry to act and, while it's easy to criticise in hindsight, there was a lot of uncertainty," he says.

Establishing the FSAI was seen as vital to protecting the nation's health and the global perception of one of its valued industries. Particularly because the end of the industry that was suffering as a result of public panic already had an image problem.

Countries that banned Irish beef in the 1990s have since lifted those bans.

"We are monitored by the EU, our position of credibility is attributed to the objective independent review by the European Commission. The Food and Veterinary Office in Ireland is part of an independent overseeing body.

"There is another organisation as well which is called the DIE. They are based in Paris. It's the International Organisation for Epizootic diseases (they are conditions that are temporarily widespread in a given species). They do a review of all the countries in the world they attributed a BSE status.

"Ireland then has been reviewed by them, and we've been deemed, in their terms, optimal stable. It means that the Irish authorities are currently managing, to a satisfactory level in their view, BSE in cattle. The highest standard would be BSE-free - we don't have that.

"Optimal stable indicates that there is adequate protection of human health, and animal health based on the measures being taken," he says.

There are countries that have never recorded a case, but they still have to take precautions.

The important thing, according to Dr O'Brien, is that the State has a framework in place geared at protecting consumers from contracting variant CJD. He also believes that the State can get to BSE-free status.

"I think we'll get there eventually, we've had 120 cases approximately in Ireland in 2004. 1998 is the cut-off point, because that's when the current level of stringency was introduced," says Dr O'Brien. " So we'll get to the point eventually when it will tail off - we think that there will be about 50 next year. Last year, it was up about 300, so the drop-off is very dramatic indeed."

Factfile:

Name: Dr John O'Brien

Post: Chief Executive Officer, Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI).

Background: Originally from Midleton, Co Cork, he is a chartered chemist, chartered biologist and registered toxicologist and was the founding editor of Trends in Food Science magazine. He got a Bachelor of Science and a PhD in food science and food chemistry from University College Cork and a masters in toxicology from the University of Surrey.

He worked in the Strathclyde Institute for Drug Research and the University of Surrey. He subsequently became director of corporate scientific affairs at Danone. He joined the FSAI three months ago.

Hobbies and interests: Walking and swimming.

Why is he in the news: Not long after taking his new post, it was confirmed that the State's first variant CJD victim was being treated in a Dublin hospital.