The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has issued storage advice for farmers with dead animals amid the ongoing strike being held by knackeries across the country, which the authority has described as “regrettable”.
In a statement to AgriLand this evening, Thursday, February 27 – the first day of full closure to be enacted by the Animal Collectors’ Association (ACA) – a spokesperson for the department said:
“It is regrettable that the ACA has acted in concert today to withhold commercial collection services from farmers, despite the provision, through a revised Fallen Animals’ Scheme, of substantially increased subsidies for its members.
The department would ask members of the association to continue to provide this vital service to their customers, and has indicated that it remains available to the ACA to discuss the detail of the revised scheme.
Continuing, the department said that, in the meantime, the department’s advice to farmers is that animal carcasses awaiting collection should be stored on farm “in a way that domestic animals, farmed livestock and wild animals/birds cannot gain access to them”.
“These should be held securely under a protective cover, such as a tarpaulin or in an enclosed building,” the department’s statement concluded.
The full closure today follows the halt of animal collection services from farms across the country yesterday, following stalled talks between the ACA and the department.