Farm dogs have become the latest victims in the spread of brucellosis, a highly infectious disease which causes abortion in cows and heifers and is also a danger to human health.
The Republic, which was a brucellosis-free zone until 10 years ago, is now fighting off a major upsurge in the disease which started in Munster in the 1990s. During the outbreak, farm families were warned not to drink unpasteurised milk and doctors found an upsurge in human cases of the disease.
In the past two years the disease has spread to Northern Ireland, where among its victims was the top Northern Ireland dairy research herd, on which decades of dairy research and animal husbandry had been based.
The most recent cases of the disease have been found in farms in Cavan/Longford and a major slaughter out policy of animals has taken place there.
Both Departments of Agriculture in Dublin and Belfast said this week that they now had the disease under control, but the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth last year had hindered progress.
In the Republic, where the total number of cases dropped to just over 200 last year, officials said a further 15 per cent reduction in infection was planned for this year as a full round of tests could take now place.
However, veterinary officials on both sides of the Border have identified a new source of the disease - farm dogs.
"Dogs are now being routinely blood tested on farms where the disease has been identified and in quite a number of cases they have been found to be carriers," said one Munster-based vet this week.
"I had one case myself this week on a farm where the dog had to be put down and it was an additional sorrow on the family involved," he said. "There is a strain of brucellosis which dogs can get but it has not been identified here, so far," he said.
"But, in many cases dogs on infected farms have found to be carriers of the disease, even though they do not suffer from it," he said. Instructions to blood test farm dogs had now been issued to vets and this was now helping in the fight to control the disease.