The burial, by the Department of Agriculture, of carcasses of individual animals suspected of harbouring BSE is further evidence of official ignorance and bureaucratic dithering. Coming on top of last week's damning report on the British Government's response to BSE - and the threat posed to humans through its variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) - the justifications and explanations offered by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, carry little weight. The suspicion must be that the Department has been more concerned about the health of the beef trade and the economy than the well-being of the public.
Galway County Council is threatening to prosecute the Department under the Waste Management Act because of the risks such burials pose for drinking water. Following the burial of a suspected BSE infected animal near the source of four group water schemes at Loughrea some time ago, local farmers dug up the carcass and it had to be subsequently re-buried under Departmental supervision. Talks took place yesterday between county council officials and the Department in an attempt to address health concerns and to identify the locations of other carcass burials.
Last February, a report by the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Scientific Advisory Committee formally urged that the burial of suspected animals should cease. It also recommended that such material should be incinerated as a matter of priority. These were not new ideas. As far back as 1996, the then government commissioned a study on building a £30m national incinerator. Mr Ivan Yates of Fine Gael explained it was necessary because of likely EU requirements. Suspect material had to be destroyed. "The options open to us are dumping at sea, landfill sites or incinerating this material, and incineration is the most viable option," he said.
Four years on and Mr Walsh yesterday attempted to explain why nothing had happened: "We are entirely in agreement in principle with the Report's recommendation that burial should cease. The reality, however, is that there is no readily available alternative for disposal of these animals which would enable us discontinue the practice of burial. Incineration is one such option, but this is not currently available here and may itself be fraught with difficulties."
It's not good enough. The Minister cannot be allowed to justify abandoning the entire national incinerator project with such woolly generalities. The Government had an obligation to ensure that best practices were followed, both for the good of the community and the welfare of one of our largest industries. And it failed to deliver.
Attempts are now being made within the Department to transfer blame to the Environment Protection Agency. Because the Department was not granted a licence for the transportation and rendering of specific risk material, it says it has no option but to bury the carcasses of suspected BSE animals once their heads are removed for testing. This has given rise to an extraordinary practice whereby the original, suspected animal must be buried, but - if the test proves positive - the rest of the herd is then slaughtered, rendered and exported for incineration, as lower risk material. It is a Kafkaesque situation.