Only about half of Ireland's mature breeding herds and flocks are currently vaccinated against the bluetongue virus (BTV).

This was according to the chairperson of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association's (ICMSA) livestock committee, Michael O'Connell, who urged farmers to be "proactively vigilant in the face of a concerning rise in the number of cases over the past few weeks".

Agriland previously reported that four million doses of BTV-3 (bluetongue) vaccines have now been supplied to private veterinary practitioners in Ireland according to latest official figures.

O'Connell stressed that this figure was "a long way from fulfilling the needs of all breeding stock whether it be bovine or ovine".

Vaccine uptake

"Based on the latest Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures, the number of dairy cows and suckler cows stood at 2.45 million cows, while breeding ewes stood at 2.7 million."

He explained that if it was assumed that a double shot vaccine was administered to cows and single shot to sheep, it equated to roughly 50% of mature breeding herds and flocks in Ireland being vaccinated, "never mind the replacement stock".  

"It just underlines the importance of farmers contacting their vets immediately for advice if in doubt and – most importantly – insisting on fallen animals being tested for BTV,” O'Connell said.

“To a degree, the increase in the number of BTV 3 cases was inevitable given the levels of the disease in the UK and, in fact, we would have expected the issue to raise its head a lot earlier than now, due to the hot, drought conditions we had all summer."

Hitting out at the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon's latest statements on vaccination, O'Connell said:

"We have consistently ‘beaten the drum’ on vaccination and [the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM)] is consistently lagging behind, he said.

"We asked them last spring to be much more proactive around encouraging the use of vaccination, but they deemed it to be a purely commercial decision to be taken between the farmers and their vets.  

"That vaccination ship has sailed and honestly coming out now in October with encouragement for farmers to vaccinate is ... way too little and way too late,” O’Connell stressed.

'One-size-fits-all'

He further criticised the "one-size-fits-all" attitude adopted by DAFM to the "50-shot packs".

“We had an awful lot of wastage as not every herd has 50 or 100 animals or exact multiples of 50, and, inevitably, smaller breeding herds are not going to use the vaccine.

"The idea of farmers sharing vaccines is not an ideal scenario either, due to handling constraints or cross contamination."

O'Connell added that the ICMSA had previously "engaged with manufacturers of BTV 3 vaccine regarding the dosage sizes, the onset of immunity and the procedure following the first year’s vaccination programme".

He said he was told that the vaccine was produced as part of "an emergency response to the initial outbreak of BTV in the Netherlands", where the assumption was that a 50-vaccine pack "was adequate to represent the size of herds in that jurisdiction".

"... we need to give every farmer the opportunity to vaccinate their herds next spring and not be shackled by constraints around the cost of surplus vaccine," O'Connell added.

"The Department is going to have to get into the game in terms of protecting the national herd and they are going to have to show a degree of urgency that has been conspicuously absent to date."

Bluetongue

Bluetongue is a non-contagious viral disease spread by biting midges.

According to the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) rising temperatures have resulted in the growth of the disease across Europe.

The bluetongue virus is particularly difficult to control, according to WOAH, because it has more than 27 serotypes.

The serotype that has been detected in Ireland is 3.

DAFM had confirmed a total of 48 cases of bluetongue in Ireland by Wednesday, October 21.