THE Department of Agriculture has rejected as "utter and absolute fabrication" a claim by Progressive Democrat TD Mr Des O'Malley that one of its vets told a man who presented a BSE diseased animal "he should take it to the knacker's yard after it died".
The Department's senior superintending veterinary officer, Mr Paddy Rogan, said no such words were uttered by a Department vet and Mr O'Malley might be misinformed. He was emphatic it did not happen.
"I cannot see any situation where a veterinary colleague of mine would suggest such a course of action," he told RTE yesterday.
He was replying to criticism of the delay in disposing of animals made in the Dail on Thursday by Mr O'Malley and repeated on Morning Ireland yesterday.
Mr Rogan said the Department's "slaughter out" policy when it found a case of BSE in a herd was voluntary, under which the agreement of the herd owner was obtained before the slaughter.
"However, the Department does have the legal powers to compulsorily depopulate herds, with or without the agreement of the herd owner on valuation," he said.
He said there was usually agreement between the herd owner and the farmer on the value of the herd before the slaughter began. He said it was "not necessarily" a job which needed to be done as a matter of urgency because BSE, unlike many other diseases, was not contagious.
Mr O'Malley's allegations were put to him, that in one case an animal died of BSE on a farm in July and the rest of the animals were still there, and that there was a similar case in August.
Mr Rogan said there were many cases of BSE this year but he was not aware of the specific cases to which Mr O'Malley referred. "I would hazard a guess that one of the cases in particular involves an investigation by the gardai. I think in that situation, delaying depopulation is perfectly reasonable and understandable."
Asked why, he said: "Because we are talking about the payment of very large sums of taxpayers' money to an individual and if Department officials, as I gather they have in this case, have grounds to question perhaps the origin of the animal in question, I think it is perfectly reasonable."
He said if the case to which Mr O'Malley was referring was the one being investigated by the gardai, he believed the investigation should be completed before the taxpayer incurred a large cost.
The animals, he said, were restricted to the farm, could not leave to enter the human food chain and contrary to what had been said yesterday morning, there was no risk to human health in those sort of cases.
Animals should not be left indefinitely. When the gardai concluded their investigation, he said, slaughter would take place immediately. He said he was unaware of other cases not dealt with since August.
It was Department policy to slaughter in the shortest possible time but it was usually delayed to allow the farmer to absorb the fact his herd was being slaughtered and to allow time for valuation.
When a herd was to be slaughtered, each animal was individually identified and then moved under Department supervision. Carcass disposal was carried out under veterinary supervision as was the storage of the waste product after destruction.
The slaughtered animals were rendered to meat and bone meal and maintained under State control.
The Department of Agriculture has already spent more than £14 million slaughtering and destroying all animals in herds where a case of BSE has been identified. More than 20,000 animals have been destroyed.