There were four new cases of BSE in the Irish herd in July, according to figures published yesterday by the Department of Agriculture and Food. This brings to 41 the number of cases so far this year. While a Department of Agriculture spokesman welcomed the slowing down in the infection rate, more cases of BSE were confirmed in the last five months of last year than at any other stage in the disease's history since 1989.
Last year's figures reached a record 74. Up until then, there had been no more than 19 cases in any of the previous years. There would, however, appear to be a slowing down of the number of cases which have been confirmed since the beginning of the year, which began with 11 cases in January.
In February, there were eight cases; March had five; April, six; May, four; June had three; and this last month's total of four may indicate a slowing down of the disease.
Two of the July cases occurred in two suckler herds in Co Donegal; one of the cows was six years old and the other five. The herds totalled 22 animals, which will be slaughtered.
The third case recorded last month was in a five-year-old dairy cow in a Co Wicklow dairy herd of 137 animals. A Co Cork case was also in a five-year-old dairy cow in a herd of 322 animals.
There have now been 230 confirmed cases of BSE in the Republic since the disease was first identified in 1989. The State has spent £22 million slaughtering and destroying 31,500 non-infected animals from herds where the disease has been identified.
Yesterday, the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland said only 17 cases of the disease had been recorded there since the beginning of the year. Since the disease was first identified there, 1,755 cases have been recorded in 1,173 herds.
The cases in Britain now total 168,283. This week, Ministry of Agriculture officials claimed the disease was being eradicated.
In Britain and Northern Ireland, the infected animal is destroyed but the rest of the herd is left intact.