The slaughter of 13,500 sheep and 1,500 cattle in a 3 km zone around the Co Louth farm affected by foot-and-mouth disease was completed yesterday afternoon, as news of a new precautionary cull of sheep was announced on both sides of the Border.
Thousands of sheep will be slaughtered in a joint operation involving the Departments of Agriculture North and South to create what is being called a "firewall" between the two farms on which foot-and-mouth disease has been identified.
A joint statement issued by both Departments said the slaughter of all sheep on land between the two affected farms, at Meigh, Co Armagh, and Proleek, which are four miles apart, would begin as soon as possible. When completed, there will be a a 15 km corridor from south of Cooley stretching north of Meigh, in which there will be no live sheep. Army marksmen are to be called in to slaughter wild deer and goats in the area.
Despite the joint approach announced yesterday there was evidence of some tension between the two Departments following the announcement by the Northern Minister, Ms Brid Rodgers, that 60 "missing" sheep which had moved through Meigh, Co Armagh, had been found and slaughtered in the Republic.
However the South's Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, who was in Dundalk yesterday to meet local farmers, was unable to confirm that the 60 sheep had been among the 1,200 sheep slaughtered at various locations in the Republic over the weekend.
Yesterday, Mr John Horgan, managing director of the Kepak Meat Processing Group, said that none of the 477 sheep and 27 cattle slaughtered on four farms in Co Meath over the weekend belonged to the company.
In a letter to The Irish Times, Mr Horgan said that none of the stockowners on whose farms the slaughterings took place had supplied stock to Kepak in the last 12 months and the company had no association whatsoever with the sheep or cattle.
"The unfortunate association of the Kepak name in the story may have arisen anecdotally from the pure coincidence that the owner of the stock at the Longwood location had sheep out-grazing on a Kepak-operated beef farm at Caulstown, Co Meath, which is near Fairyhouse," he said.
Mr Horgan said that with good grassland management in view, Kepak had let the Caulstown land for early spring grazing to local sheep farmers.
"This year the land was let for this purpose to a farmer from Longwood, on the recommendation of a local farmer who previously grazed the late winter early spring grass on the Caulstown farm.
"It was those sheep that were slaughtered at Caulstown on Saturday. The owner is not and has not been a supplier to Kepak," he concluded.