Ireland’s valuable international beef and dairy trade is not expected to suffer after tests confirmed a cow which died from BSE was an isolated case.

The Department of Agriculture fears that the suspected BSE case in a Louth dairy farm could see Ireland lose its negligible risk status for the disease.

Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has predicted the US will move to lift its ban on EU beef, once procedural requirements around the publication of BSE rules are completed.

Ireland has made progress in its bid to reopen trading channels to the US for Irish beef and lamb exports.

IRISH fish farmers have been hit by an outbreak of ostreid herpes virus in oysters.

YOU can’t get it from eating pig meat, it had never been seen before in pigs ... but scientists called it swine flu.

A DOWNWARD trend in Brazil’s cattle cycle, due to reduced profitability for store producers in recent years, has reduced cattle supplies, and the strong domestic market has responded with sharp price increases.

THE advance of exotic diseases has alarmed the multi-billion euro thoroughbred racing and breeding industries.

Stephen Cadogan warns of the potential impact of a disease which has already affected Irish calf sellers and exporters.

Three years after the first outbreaks of bird flu in Asia, experts are still puzzling at how the disease spread across three continents so quickly and how wild birds have helped disseminate the deadly virus.

Some 300 scientists and animal experts from around 100 countries will gather in Rome next week for a conference aimed at examining the role of wild birds in spreading the deadly strain of bird flu.

Ivory Coast has reported its first cases of H5N1 bird flu, in both domestic poultry and in wild birds, the World Organisation for Animal Health said today.

The discovery of a dead swan with H5 bird flu in Scotland indicates that many more wild birds in the area are likely to be infected, a leading British virologist says.

Bird flu could reach the Americas in six to 12 months or even sooner following its rapid expansion through Asia, Europe and Africa, the UN bird flu chief said yesterday.

A GERMAN minister has claimed the deadly bird flu is moving closer to infecting humans in Europe, while a Belgian man, who last week returned from China, has checked into a Brussels hospital with flu symptoms.

Veterinary chiefs meeting in Paris today said that no country should consider itself safe from lethal bird flu and that it is “highly likely” that the disease will continue its spread in poultry stocks in Europe and beyond.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed yesterday in a third African country, deepening experts’ fears that the disease is becoming endemic on the poor, ill-equipped continent and that it may already be far more widespread than reported.

INTERNATIONAL veterinary experts gathered in Paris to discuss the fight against bird flu as the lethal H5N1 strain made further advances in Africa, was confirmed in Bosnia, and French authorities started a mass vaccination programme of ducks and geese.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was today confirmed in a third African country, deepening experts’ fears that the disease is becoming endemic on the poor, ill-equipped continent and that it may already be far more widespread than reported.

The H5 sub-type of bird flu has been found in a dead wild duck in France, and the government said it was almost certainly the lethal H5N1 strain.

The spread of bird flu from Asia to eastern Europe and now west Africa has increased the chance that the virus will mutate and cause a possible pandemic among humans, says the United Nations’ expert on the disease.

Authorities reported Africa’s first case of a deadly bird-flu strain, saying officials in afflicted Nigeria need help to prevent its spread on an impoverished continent poorly equipped to fight an outbreak.

THE deadly H5N1 bird flu virus has been detected on a large commercial chicken farm in Nigeria - the first reported outbreak in Africa, the World Organisation for Animal Health said yesterday.

Pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline today said soaring sales of its asthma drug Advair and diabetes medication Avandia drove profits up 16%.

A “highly pathogenic” strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in poultry stocks in Nigeria – the first reported case of the disease in Africa, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health said today.

A bird-flu outbreak has killed 545 chickens and ducks in a village in central China in the country’s third case of the disease in two weeks, the government announced today.

An Indonesian man has died of bird flu, raising the country’s human toll to four, officials said today, as international health experts prepared to go house-to-house to search for infected poultry.

European Union authorities agreed on new measures aimed at preventing a lethal strain of bird flu from entering the bloc and moved to calm people’s fears about contracting the disease, one day after it was confirmed on the continent’s doorstep in Turkey.

Southeast Asian agriculture ministers have agreed to launch a three-year plan next year aimed at stamping out the menace of bird flu in the region – a move they hope will win enough international aid to halt the disease before it becomes a catastrophic global epidemic with the potential to kill millions.

TWO children have been hospitalised in Indonesia with suspected bird flu, and the government put the country on high alert yesterday as it struggled to contain a virus that has killed four people.

International health experts today unveiled a multi-pronged strategy against bird flu calling for Asian governments to overhaul backyard farming practices and vaccinate poultry to prevent the disease from becoming a human pandemic.

Health and animal experts warned bird flu could trigger the next global pandemic as they opened a three-day conference today in Vietnam on how to control what has been deemed the world’s biggest health risk.

Vietnam will host an international conference later this month to discuss ways to combat the growing bird flu outbreak that has killed 12 people in Vietnam in a month, an official said today.

THAILAND yesterday confirmed its 10th death from bird flu and said the woman may have contracted the virus from her daughter, raising the alarming possibility of human-to-human transmission of the disease.

Asia’s bird flu epidemic is a ”crisis of global importance”, two UN agencies warned as Thailand went on nationwide alert yesterday after the virus was confirmed in a woman whose case has raised concerns over human-to-human transmission.

WORLD health experts yesterday recommended that a poultry vaccination campaign be launched to control the spread of a bird flu epidemic, which has claimed the lives of 17 people in Asia.

Moves to export British meat to non-European Union countries were underway today after Britain was declared free of foot-and-mouth disease by the World Organisation for Animal Health.

Hundreds of pigs have died of foot and mouth disease in Hong Kong.