Cattle in the north-west which were fed meat and bonemeal, banned by the EU since 1990, are to be monitored by the Department of Agriculture in case they develop BSE.
The meat and bonemeal arrived in Ireland in November from the United States, compounded in a 5,500 tonne boatload of maize gluten, which is a by-product of alcohol manufacture in the US.
The gluten was distributed to nearly a dozen compounders who mix feed for cattle. Early in December, Department inspectors detected traces of bonemeal in animal feed in the north-west and ordered a recall of all the material. It also ordered an immediate investigation of the source of the contamination, which it traced back to the shipment of gluten to a Dublin-based importer.
However, according to the Department, more than 550 tonnes of the gluten was sold directly to farmers and may have already been fed to cattle.
A Department spokesman yesterday confirmed an Irish Farmers Journal report that it had ordered the recall and that almost 74 tonnes had been recovered from farms and compounders.
He said 2,500 tonnes of the gluten was still being held in Dublin and work was continuing to recover as much as possible of the remainder. "We have no major concerns about the meat and bonemeal because it originated in the United States where there have been no cases of BSE," he added.
"However, it is in breach of the EU and national regulations to feed meat and bonemeal to cattle since 1990 and to pigs and poultry since the beginning of last year. We accept that the material was imported here in good faith and we are proud that our BSE control systems picked up this material in animal feed."
All the compound feed which included gluten and which had been assembled at an unnamed but registered compounding plant in the north-west was recalled and seized and taken to Dublin.
The spokesman confirmed that in the course of the investigation, farms and other compounding plants had been visited. "We will continue to monitor cattle fed the material on farms but we are satisfied that they are highly unlikely to develop BSE," he said.
Herds would have been instantly depopulated if there was any concern that they might be infected by the feed.
Contaminated meat and bonemeal is thought to have been the cause in Britain of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the mid-1980s when sheep brains rendered into meat and bonemeal at heat levels too low to prevent the spread of infection was fed to cattle. Since then, it has spread to every EU country except Sweden, has been found in most eastern European countries and was recently found in Japan.