Authorities confirm 12th incidence of BSE in first half of year

A COW in Longford has been confirmed as the latest animal in the Republic to have BSE. According to a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, the case was confirmed last Friday.

The animal has been destroyed and buried on the farm. Its head and spinal cord were taken for examination to the State Laboratory at Abbottstown, Co Dublin, as is procedure.

The rest of the herd has been "restricted" pending "depopulation", according to the Department spokesman. The farmer owner may not move them, he said, and they would be slaughtered at a meat factory "away from where other animals are slaughtered".

The carcasses would be rendered into bone meal, he said, which would be stored away, separately, from all other bone meal until the Department decided how best to dispose of it.

The Longford case is the 12th incidence of BSE to be confirmed in the Republic this year, and brings the number of cases in this country since 1989 to 127.

Facilities did not exist in the Republic to incinerate carcasses belonging to the same herd in which the disease was discovered, the spokesman said. Incineration on the farm would cause environmental problems, while approaches to the ESB about using its furnaces for the purpose had been unproductive.

Before this year, meat from such herds went into the food chain. From January this took place only following a post mortem on each animal's brain and spinal cord which cleared it of BSE.

In the light of Britain's current BSE crisis, the Minister for Agriculture announced that all animals from a herd in which the disease had been discovered would be destroyed. It was understood that destruction would involve carcass incineration.

But the Department spokesman said last night that the procedure involved separate slaughter, rendering to bone meal separately and the storage of this meal separately pending destruction.

Meanwhile, following discussions between the Federation of Irish Renderers and representatives of the meat industry at IBEC yesterday, agreement was reached allowing for the immediate resumption of the renderers' operations.

The State's nine rendering plants are to agree new contracts with meat plants "which reflect the current crisis in the marketplace".