CONFIRMATION that Newcastle disease, which has devastated the Norths poultry industry, has arrived in the Republic is expected today following the results of tests being carried out in Britain.
But the Department of Agriculture, veterinary experts and poultry industry remained confident yesterday that, despite the particularly virulent strain involved, its spread could be prevented.
Any failure to contain the outbreak could affect supplies of home produced poultry meat, with processors already struggling to meet the extra demand caused by the drop in beef consumption.
The outbreak here, on a farm in the Cootehill area in Co Cavan, was in a flock of 20,000 birds which had been imported recently as day old chicks from the North. The disease spread rapidly through the flock, killing three quarters of it, after it became apparent last weekend. The remaining birds have been slaughtered.
The incident led to a call yesterday by Mr Diarmuid Dooge, vice president of the Irish Veterinary Association, for processors here to implement a voluntary ban on poultry imports from the North.
Imports from the North have been restricted since the outbreak of the disease there in February, but Mr Dooge said there was nothing illegal about the importation which had led to the Cootehill outbreak. The birds concerned had been brought in from a disease free area which was not within one of the North's control zones", from which movement of poultry products is restricted.
He said EU regulations prevented the Department of Agriculture from imposing a blanket ban on poultry imports from the North, but it would make "good sense" for the industry to discontinue such imports as long as the problem exists.
Consumers were assured yesterday there was no threat to public health from the suspected outbreak.
A Department of Agriculture spokesman said investigations were being carried out in conjunction with Northern veterinary authorities to establish why new certification procedures introduced in February had failed in this case to keep out the disease.
