ANOTHER case of BSE in the Republic was confirmed yesterday. Meanwhile, the North Eastern Health Board distanced itself from a report written by a Co Louth doctor with a qualification in public health which queries official assurances in Ireland about the disease.
The Department of Agriculture said that the latest case of BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) disease had been confirmed on a farm in Co Cork.
The animal involved is a six year old cow and the entire herd of 178 animals will be destroyed.
This, said a spokesman, is the 11th case this year and brings the total number of cases in the Republic's herd since 1989 to 126. He added that this was Corks fourth case this year.
Meanwhile Dr Vincent Carroll, who is acting director of community care for Louth, was at pains yesterday to stress that his report was written in "a purely personal and private capacity".
A spokesman for the board said it had "no knowledge" of Dr Carroll's research and did not approve of it.
Details of the report are published in the Irish Medical Times this week. It says assurances from the Government and others that Irish beef is safe to eat fail to take account of a number of key issues.
These include the possibility that implements used in beef processing could transmit the disease from carcass to carcass.
According to Dr Carroll, the implements need to be heated to 132 degrees Celsius for one hour to kill the agent for Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (the human form of BSE).
However, economic considerations in beef processing would rule this out.
Another area of concern is the incubation period for BSE in cattle, thought to be four years. Most beef cattle are slaughtered before four years of age - before the disease has time to manifest itself clinically.
He says it is not known if BSE can spread to humans by eating beef from infected cattle. However, if that was the case, then it was possible the disease could spread from cattle incubating it.
It had been shown that the agent for CJD was very difficult to destroy. This raised the possibility that the agent could remain for years in grass on which infected cows had urinated, thus infecting other cattle.
Dr Carroll told The Irish Times yesterday that his research was based on a review of the relevant scientific literature, in reputable journals.
This included articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Epidemiology. A study by Gibbs et al in 1980, published in the Journal of Internal Diseases, showed that CJD could be transmitted to squirrel monkeys.
The BSE crisis clearly demonstrated the need for independent research, "free from industry or political influence", and the need for transparency about the results, he said.
The research should focus on the possibility of the cross contamination of cattle in abattoirs and examine if cattle could transmit the disease during the incubation period, Dr Carroll added.