Research shows Irish consumers are not perturbed by reports on BSE and regard beef as a healthy food, Bord Bia, the board which promotes Irish food exports, said yesterday.
A spokeswoman says it had not yet had any adverse reaction from the international markets to the latest BSE scare.
She said the board did not expect a great deal of reaction from the markets because the latest scientific research on transmission was still very "laboratory-driven".
"We are very confident in the controls we have in place here for many years now to prevent the transmission of the disease through the food chain," she said.
"Ours are the strictest in Europe and they have served us very well. If additional controls are put in place to cover other species then that will be done."
She said recent research showed that 80 per cent of Irish consumers surveyed said they would be eating the same amount of beef in the future. However, she agreed that the very mention of the term "BSE" always created difficulties for the beef industry, both here and abroad.
The latest BSE reports come amid a total recovery in Irish beef sales to pre-1996 levels when the market collapsed with the House of Commons announcement linking BSE with vCJD in humans.
Last year beef exports increased by 9 per cent to 554,000 tonnes, making the Republic the largest net exporter of beef in the northern hemisphere.
There was a 12 per cent increase in exports to the UK, which took 95,000 tonnes of beef, and an extra 20,000 tonnes was sold to continental Europe.
Last year was a record year for Irish exports to the Netherlands, which were up by 30 per cent. Increases were also recorded in Italy, France and Germany.
Non-EU markets performed well, and Ireland maintained its share in the major importing countries, including Egypt and Russia, where levels fell slightly.
Live shipments also performed well, with exports increasing to 416,000 head, with over 80 per cent going to European markets, mainly Spain. Exports to Lebanon more than doubled to 75,000 head.
The levels of BSE in the Irish herd of over 7.5 million cattle are very low. So far this year 64 cases have been found in the national herd, 20 more than during the same period last year. In all, there have been 511 cases of the disease here since 1989 when it was first identified.