Ireland will be seeking the support of France later today in Brussels to prevent the Irish beef industry face a major trading crisis over rising levels of BSE.
Ireland is listed as a low-risk area by the international veterinary organisation, the OIE, but is running dangerously close to losing that status because of increased testing of sick and dead animals which are not bound for the food chain and the mass testing of all animals over 30 months for BSE.
Up until the introduction of the new tests two years ago, Ireland had fewer than 100 cases each year, but the number of cases rose to 149 in 2000 and 246 in 2001.
So far this year, there have been 139 cases.
With Ireland's overall figure now close to 1,000 cases since the disease was first identified here in 1989, Ireland, France and Germany will today ask the EU Standing Veterinary Committee to re-examine its grading of countries in light of the new cases being brought forward by active surveillance.
The outcome of the deliberations will be of vital importance to the €1.6 billion Irish beef sector, which relies heavily on exports and which has to export eight out of every 10 animals.
They will be arguing that active pursuit of cases in animals not bound for the food chain should not disadvantage them as adequate controls remain in place to protect beef consumers with the testing of all beef over 30 months old in the EU.
Ireland and the other countries fear that unless representations are made to the OIE in Paris, they could be locked out of important beef markets and be placed in the same category as Britain and Portugal.
The EU system has penalised these countries because they reported more than 100 case of BSE per million animals.
The announcement that an animal born in February 1997 had the disease has brought severe criticism of the Department of Agriculture, which said at the weekend that the British experience had shown that animals born after then could have been fed contaminated meat and bone-meal which had not been destroyed at the time.
It is conducting a major examination into the case.
The animal was born into a dairy herd some miles away from where it had spent the most of its life.
The cohort animals, which were born at the same time on the Co Roscommon farm, are being slaughtered and their brains examined for the disease.
The Department remains convinced that the disease is concentrated in older cows in the national herd and that few cases will turn up in animals born after 1997.
It has also accepted there will be an increase in overall numbers of the disease because of increased surveillance, but that increase does not indicate increased exposure of the disease but increased ability to identify cases.