I am aware of the UK Food Standards Agency report to which the Deputy refers. The FSAI has examined the study. The authority advises me that the study covers the period 1986 to 2000 and the conclusion from the study is that both Irish and British beef is safe and consumers should, therefore, be reassured. The study does not claim that the risk of eating BSE contaminated meat is greater in Ireland than in the United Kingdom or elsewhere. It states that while the relative likelihood for Ireland compared to Great Britain of cattle incubating BSE was 220 in 2000, this is not a direct indicator of risk to consumer health.
The report states that red meat is safe and that any possible BSE infectivity is confined to specified risk material, SRM, infective tissue such as the brain and spinal cord. The report notes that the consumer had been and remains protected by the Irish SRM rules which have been in place since 1996. These tissues are removed from all animals aged over 12 months in Ireland and excluded from the human food chain.
The FSAI's scientific advisory committee has concluded that Irish consumers need to be reassured as to the safety of beef. The European Union, in its geographically based risk assessment, concluded that BSE controls in Ireland were optimally stable from 1 January 1998. The FSAI's scientific advisory committee has concluded that animals born after that date pose no risk to consumer health, as these animals would not have had access to contaminated meat and bone meal, and, therefore, could not be incubating BSE.