There has been a marked decline in the number of BSE cases recorded in the national herd so far this year.
The latest figures announced by the Department of Agriculture show that up until this week, 43 cases of the disease were discovered so far this year.
However, in the same period last year, the authorities had found 72 cases of BSE in what turned out to be a record year for the disease in the State, when 333 cases were diagnosed.
However, the drop in the number of cases was beginning to emerge last year when there was a 30 per cent drop in the number of cases in the September/December period compared to 2001.
Department of Agriculture scientists predicted the trend would continue in the new year and this has proven to be true, with 29 fewer cases being recorded in the first seven weeks of 2003.
Perhaps of greater importance was that the cases now being discovered are in older animals which were exposed to contaminated meat and bonemeal prior to January 1998 when animal feed controls became optimally stable.
Despite a recognition by an EU scientific steering committee that Ireland's feeding controls were stable from 1996 onward, very stable from 1997 and optimally stable since 1998, three animals with BSE born after January 1998 were found last year.
However, the Department has pointed out that consumers are at no risk because the specified risk material, organs in which the disease resides and might be passed on to humans, is removed from all cattle slaughtered.
One of the four cases disclosed last week was identified by means of traditional passive surveillance, i.e., on the farm.
The remaining three cases were identified under the increased active surveillance programme. Under this programme, testing of a proportion of fallen stock and cattle destined for human consumption was initiated in July 2000.
This was extended in January 2001 to test all cattle over 30 months destined for human consumption and all casualty animals. Since July 2001, all fallen cattle are also tested.
Over 1.45 million tests have been carried out to date under the active surveillance programme (over 662,000 in 2001, over 688,000 in 2002 and over 100,000 so far in 2003).
Last week's cases were found in Cavan in an eight-year-old beef breeding cow and a 10-year-old dairy animal, in a nine-year-old Wexford dairy cow and in a 10-year-old Mayo beef breeding cow.