Hunt squires leave a potentially fatal legacy

YOU reported (July 23) on the “first case of a possibly fatal disease,” saying that the trichinellosis diagnosed in a Polish man in Dublin was “previously found only in foxes”.

As part of an investigation of factors relating to trichinella outbreaks, researchers in the UCC zoology department, in the late 1960s, discovered that foxhounds in this country were hosts of two difficult parasites — trichinella and echinococcus.

After the research team had carried out a thorough investigation, it was concluded that hounds were infected as a result of eating foxes caught during hunting.