IRELAND RECORDED two fewer cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in 2008 than in the previous year, official figures have shown.
The final case last year in a 12-year-old dairy cow in Co Kerry brought the total for the year to 23 confirmed cases.
The total number of cases in 2007 was 25, there were 41 cases in 2006, 69 in 2005, 126 in the previous year and 182 in 2003. The highest BSE incidence on record was recorded in the previous year, 2002, when 333 cases were found.
The reduction is in line with predictions by scientists that the infection rate would fall with the animal age profile.
Scientists were puzzled at the lack of a drop in cases following a strict ban on feeding meat and bonemeal to cattle in the early 1990s. It was almost a decade before the cross-contamination of food at mills was identified as a continuing source of infection because meat and bonemeal continued to be fed to pigs and poultry.