Dr. Damien Barrett:

On contamination and risk to the public, the big thing that protects the public is the pasteurisation of milk. That is one of the main reasons tuberculosis in people is not the issue that it was prior to pasteurisation. By the same token, we recommend that people, and farmers in particular, do not consume their own milk, but instead use pasteurised milk to avoid that risk. There may be some unpasteurised products and we have additional controls and testing on herds that supply milk for those products. Abattoir workers are at greater risk but they are given PPE to wear when reactor animals are being slaughtered.

On the question about animals being left, generally speaking, animals are removed from farms within two days of valuations being accepted. There may be the odd exceptional case but, generally speaking, our average removal time is less than two days.

The current herd incidence in County Clare is approximately 4%. Last year it was approximately 3.5% and the year before that it was around 2.5%.