Vol. 488 No. 4
168 Mr. Coveney asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food if he has satisfied himself that the enfer test, which has been validated by his Department as an excellent diagnostic test for BSE, will detect the disease in animals that have shown no clinical signs of BSE; and, if so, the earliest age at which this test is capable of detecting BSE. [6490/98]
My Department's involvement with the enfer test has been confined to the validation of its ability to detect clinical cases and those preclinical cases available to my Department which were detectable by conventional test methods. The enfer test has not, to my knowledge been validated for the detection of evidence or traces of BSE at other stages of the disease and it is not known at what stage in the incubation period that the test can detect the disease.
