The number of cows found with BSE has increased sharply, moving close to the highest levels detected since the disease was first identified in the State in 1989.
BSE infection figures have jumped to 14 for this month, the highest monthly total so far this year and nine cases higher than last November. While there was no official comment from the Department of Agriculture and Food, the figure, which brings the total number of BSE cases this year to 73, represents a setback in the fight to eradicate the disease.
Cases for the year look set to equal, if not exceed, last year's 80 - the highest annual total on record since 1989.
Detected BSE cases remained under 20 annually until 1996 when it was announced in the House of Commons in London there might be a link between it and nvCJD, a similar type of disease found in humans.
Cases reported to the Irish authorities from August 1996 doubled and 18 cases were recorded that November.
Since then the monthly totals have remained below this level until this month when a sudden surge was recorded. There is no known scientific reason for this jump.
Four of the diseased cows were found in herds in Monaghan, two were in herds in Cavan, Waterford, Limerick and Clare and there were cases in single herds in Meath and Cork.
The oldest victim of the disease detected during the month was eight years old and the youngest were dairy cows found in herds in Limerick and Waterford.
Veterinary experts expect the disease to be eradicated finally early in the millennium and concede it will turn up in animals which received feed contaminated with meat and bone meal up to 1996.
While feeding meat and bone meal to cows was banned in the late 1980s here and in Britain, it emerged in 1996 there was contamination of cattle feed here and in the UK at milling plants that used the same rollers to compound feed for cattle and other farm animals.
The experts now claim there will be no more contamination of feed because mills have been designated and cannot mix the operation of feed for the poultry and pig industry with cattle feeding.
If this is the reason for the continuation of the disease in cows, then the numbers should drop dramatically from 2000 and eventually die out altogether by the middle of the next decade.