A number of county executives of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) have held several meetings focused on addressing wide-ranging issues in animal health – especially TB – with more meetings set to take place.
Speaking to Agriland, IFA animal health chairperson TJ Maher said that he has received “a huge number of requests” from county executives to attend their meetings to discuss issues around the TB Eradication Programme, in particular the “ever-increasing frustration” of farmers over increasing reactor numbers.
The most recent such meeting took place this week in Co. Clare, which saw a broad discussion on animal health, but with TB figuring prominently.
“Like all parts of the country at the moment, TB, increasing numbers of reactors, delays in payment on income supplements, and the deer programme not being up and running yet, is the frustration.
According to Maher, 70% of all reactors are cows, which are the “most profitable animals in any farm, so therefore there is significant income loss”.
“Delays to payment of income supplements are a huge frustration, as well as the obvious frustration around removal of animals and the perceived lack of removal of sources of infection in wildlife, whether that’s the badger in most cases, or in some cases the deer,” he said.
“Obviously the deer population needs to be reduced from the human safety perspective of the roads, but from a farmer’s perspective, the issue is damage to property…but also the ever increasing amount of deer that are coming and eating what is a very precious resource, which is grass,” Maher added.
The IFA animal health chairperson also called for the deer management programme to be progressed.
“We are at a stage where the department [of Agriculture, Food and the Marine] is tendering for a programme manager. They have committed to the establishment of 10 deer management units by the end of this year, and they will rapidly need to be done so that farmers can have confidence over the next year or two that the rollout of this programme will be successful,” Maher said.
He also said that farmers were frustrated over the badger aspect of the wildlife programme.
“We rapidly need to move to see a reduction at this stage… We can’t continue to remove a large number of producing animals and leave reservoirs of disease behind,” he said.
Maher also called on the government to uphold a commitment to reduce vat on vaccinations, which according to the IFA animal health chairperson, would save farmers a total of €10 million a year.