Consumers should be aware that BSE-infected meat came only from older animals and that meat from young animals was safer than it had ever been, the Food Safety Authority has stated.
Dr Patrick Wall, the authority's chief executive, said that the meat and bone meal ban had been stringently adhered to in this State from 1996 onwards, and younger animals were therefore free of BSE.
While pig producers were still permitted to feed meat and bone meal to their stock, Dr Wall said that the licences for such feed were carefully regulated by the Department of Agriculture.
Consumers should question their butchers on the age of the animal if they were concerned about the safety of meat they were purchasing, Dr Wall said. He pointed out that supermarket chains had a policy of selling meat from animals aged under 36 months.
Dr Wall said that a number of safeguards were in place to prevent BSE affecting older animals. Referring to the new Enfer test, which is to be introduced in the Republic early next year, he said it was likely that the EU would make such a test compulsory next summer.
"How big is the problem? No one knows. All we can do is ensure that we are doing all we can to make food as safe as possible."
Dr Wall pointed to the relatively low incidence of BSE in the Republic, compared with the UK, and said that the risk had to be put into perspective. "Eight people are slaughtered on the roads every week. If that number were killed from vCJD, there would be uproar."
The BSE outbreaks in Germany, Spain and France came as no surprise, Dr Wall said, since farmers in these countries had been feeding meat and bone meal to cattle up to 1996. They had not discovered BSE before now because they had not been "aggressively looking for it".