Northern Ireland beef safe to eat says chief vet Robert Huey

The chief veterinary officer for Northern Ireland has said NI beef is safe to eat.

Robert Huey was speaking after a suspected case of "mad cow disease" was identified in the Republic of Ireland.

Further tests are being carried out, but if confirmed, it would be the first case of BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in Ireland since 2013.

Mr Huey said despite the development, it was business as usual for the Northern Ireland beef industry.

"The controls we have in place are robust and ensure that beef from the north is safe to eat," he said.

"It's very much just business as usual. We have our controls, we have our controls in meat plants, we have our controls in meat and bone meal, we have our surveillance and those are robust.

"They're the same controls that are protecting public health and animal health across Europe and I'm confident that those are sufficient to ensure that, if instances do happen, that they are sporadic and only a one-off."

The animal involved in the incident in the Republic of Ireland is a five-year-old cow from a dairy farm in County Louth.

The Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) said the cow was not presented for slaughter and did not enter the food chain.

Mr Huey said that showed that the existing safeguards were effective.

"It does prove that the surveillance that's in place across Europe actually works," he said.

"We've always suspected that there might be an occasional sporadic outbreak in an individual animal and that's what we seem to have here."