A national task force has been set up to prevent the spread of E.coli 0157, which has already caused one death in the State, the Irish Veterinary Congress in Cork was told yesterday.
Dr Cliodhna Foley-Nolan, who is heading the task force, said that while national infection figures were not yet available, the number of cases of poisoning had almost doubled in the Southern Health Board area in the last year.
She said the number of people treated for the pathogen in the board area had risen from five in 1996 to eight in 1997, and there were already 15 so far in Cork and Kerry this year.
E.coli 0157 caused the deaths of 30 elderly people in Scotland some years ago and has caused many deaths in the US. It is normally picked up by humans eating undercooked meat.
The pathogen occurs in the stomach contents of cattle and can be transferred to meat products during processing. Dr Patrick Wall, the chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, told delegates attending the conference at the Silver Springs Hotel that it was establishing a system to ensure all Irish produced food was safe.
Ireland, he said, was ahead of the rest of Europe in having an independent agency to promote enforced food safety standards and should work at using this advantage for sales of food.
The conference was told that the greatest threat facing the health of the national herd was brucellosis. Mr Bill Cashman, of the Irish Veterinary Association, said the disease posed a threat to human health as well and could only be eradicated by good husbandry practices.
"Ireland has already lost its disease-free status because the number of herds infected has exceeded the EU threshold of 0.2 per cent."
He said that, with education and the political will, the disease could be eradicated in a three-year period now that a 30-day post-and pre-movement test had been introduced.
The conference was also told that the fall in the number of farmers at work would impact on their profession by the year 2015.
Mr Michael Miley, the spokesman for Teagasc, said research indicated there would be only 20,000 full-time commercial farmers by the year 2015. Of these, he said, 15,000 would be involved in dairying and the remainder in tillage and drystock production.
The Department of Agriculture yesterday said there had been nine cases of BSE in the country in November, one less than in November last year. The cases were detected in Cos Cavan, Cork, Offaly, Sligo, Wicklow, Galway, Kilkenny and Waterford, bringing to 58 the number of cases detected so far this year. Last year there were 80.