A three-year-old bull has been diagnosed with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) on a Co Limerick farm, it was learned last night.Although the Department of Agriculture and Food refused to confirm the report, sources in the industry did so.
The discovery will cast serious doubts on the quality of the controls on Irish farms to prevent the continuing incidence of the disease in the national herd.
This will also be the youngest animal to have been found with BSE in the Republic and one of the few male animals to have been detected.
The Department of Agriculture and Food and its Minister, Mr Walsh, have claimed that the feed and other controls in the State are the best in the world.
Every week when the Department issued its weekly figures it pointed out that the EU's Steering Committee had reported that controls here were "optimally stable since January 1998".
The feeding of meat and bonemeal to cattle and sheep was banned in 1989 when it became clear that feeding infected meat and bonemeal caused the disease.
But it was not until 1996 that British scientists found there was continuing infection of animals where meat and bonemeal, legal until 2000, were being manufactured with the same equipment used to compound cattle feed.
The segregation of the two feeding systems was achieved in 1997.
The number of infected animals born after that date dropped dramatically with only three other cases reported so far.
Department officials claimed these limited cases had been caused where pig and poultry food was fed to calves either by mistake or neglect.
Department of Agriculture sources indicated last night the public will be told today that the young bull had been exposed to poultry and pig food on the farm.