A Department of Agriculture proposal to display herd histories on mart boards has been met with strong opposition from the Irish Cattle and Sheep Association (ICSA) and other farm organisations at the TB Forum.

The ICSA animal health and welfare chair Hugh Farrell said: “The introduction of herd categorisation or risk-based trading at this time would have a devastating impact on farmers.

There are simply no mechanisms that could compensate for the devaluation in herds that this would bring about.

“This information, in a public forum, would wreak havoc on the market and result in many farms going out of business.”

Continuing, Farrell said: “As a disease prevention measure, ICSA is calling for the urgent establishment of a closed calf to beef units to accommodate calves from reactor herds.

We need to see these established to reduce the potential for these calves to further spread the disease as they are dispersed around the country.

Concluding, Farrell said that these are some of the issues that have yet to be resolved.

“The danger is that the forum will be shut down once the Department have got what they want out of the process while these and other issues are put on the long finger.”