Two of the latest four cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), recorded this week could not be positively confirmed, the Department of Agriculture and Food said yesterday.
In its weekly report on the number of cases of the disease it said that a nine-year-old animal in Monaghan and a six-year-old in Mayo which had been taken to knackeries, had tested positive on the ENFER test.
This test is carried out on the stomach contents of cattle but the final confirmation is ascertained by a test of the brain carried out in the laboratory.
Because of accelerated decomposition of brain tissue samples caused by the hot weather, it was not possible to obtain a definitive confirmation in the laboratory, a Department spokesman said.
As a precautionary measure, the Department had treated the two cases as being confirmed and followed the standard procedure of destroying the entire herds involved, the spokesman added.
The four new cases bring to 129 the number of animals found with the disease in the national herd so far this year. This time last year 232 cases had been confirmed.
Over 1.73 million tests have been carried out on cattle to detect the disease since July 2000, in a drive to ascertain the true level of the disease in herds throughout the EU.
The Department spokesman said that the enhanced controls of animal feed introduced in 1996 and early 1997 were proving effective.