The number of cases of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) dropped by 150 this year, the Department of Agriculture and Food announced yesterday.
A total of 183 cases were confirmed in 2003, end-of-year figures issued yesterday showed. This compares with 333 in 2002, the worst year on record since the disease was first identified here in 1989.
This represented a 45 per cent reduction in the number of confirmed cases which occurred almost exclusively in animals born after 1997.
Controls to prevent the continuing contamination of feed were introduced in 1996 when British scientists found that minuscule amounts of contaminated bonemeal, which was being legally fed to pigs and poultry, caused the spread of the disease.
The Government ordered the segregation of cattle and pig ration manufacture from cattle feed as contamination of cattle feed was happening at mills. Meat and bonemeal had been banned from cattle feed in 1989. Since 1996, both here and in Britain, there has been a dramatic fall-off in the number of animals detected with the disease.
That position was strengthened in 2000 when the feeding of meat and bonemeal to pigs and poultry was banned by the EU, removing any possibility of such material being fed to cattle.
A spokesman for the Department said that, while there was no room for complacency, there were, nonetheless, strong grounds for optimism that the current positive trends would continue in 2004 and beyond.
"The enhanced controls over animal feed and Specified Risk Materials (SRMs) introduced in 1996 and 1997 have had a significant effect on the exposure of animals born after that time to BSE infectivity," he said.
An extensive programme of testing for the disease has been in place here since 2000.
Veterinary tests are being carried out on all animals over 30 months old entering the food chain, and further tests on all injured and dead cattle taken to knackeries.