Live exports are “hugely important” for Ireland’s cattle and sheep sectors, and they need to be “done right”, the president of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) has said.
“Any mistreatment of young calves is completely unacceptable, and anyone found to be acting unlawfully must be held accountable,” Dermot Kelleher said.
Kelleher was speaking after an RTÉ Investigates programme showed footage documenting animal welfare issues at several Irish marts and during transport to mainland Europe.
An investigation into the matter by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has already commenced, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue said.
Live exports and CBV
While Ireland’s live export sector “must be protected”, the programme which aired last night (Monday, July 11), exposed a “raft of failings that all need to be urgently tackled”, Kelleher said.
Commenting that live exports are “hugely important” for Ireland’s cattle and sheep sectors, and that they need to be “done right and done to the letter of the law”, the ICSA president said:
“Extremely exacting standards for the care of animals during transportation have been thoroughly legislated for and it is imperative that these standards are enforced.”
Speaking about the need for the dairy sector to focus on producing quality calves for the beef sector by improving their Commercial Beef Value (CBV), he said Ireland aims to genotype the entire herd.
“We know there are significant variations in efficiency and cost effectiveness when it comes to finishing animals depending on their beef merit,” the ICSA president said.
Farmers buying calves, weanlings, and store cattle at marts, he said, need this information to make “informed decisions” about what they are buying and how these animals are likely to perform.
“It does, however, require a real drive to get dairy farmers to get the balance right in breeding and make sure that cows are not only bred for a narrow range of traits,” he commented.
Irish dairy calves
The government and the dairy sector have a responsibility to adequately plan for the volume of bull calves produced each year, the ICSA president said.
This includes contingency planning for “unforeseen eventualities”, such as with the temporary closure of the Pignet lairage in France earlier this year, Kelleher said.
Other safeguarding measures that need to be examined, he said, include increasing the age at which calves can be transported to 28 days and installing lairage facilities at Irish ports.
While the aired footage is “certainly not reflective of how the vast majority of farmers or animal handlers treat animals in their care”, Kelleher said it is “deeply disturbing and must not be tolerated”.
“It is important to remember that our dairy sector is a success story in terms of meeting the objectives set out by government when quotas were abolished in 2015.
“Whether those same objectives would be set today is debatable, but the fact remains that many dairy farmers have invested heavily and increased production mainly through efficiency,” he said.
Sexed semen
The treatment of the animals shown in the programme, particularly regarding the transportation, has been condemned by the agriculture spokesperson for Fine Gael, Senator Tim Lombard.
However, Senator Lombard, who is a dairy farmer himself, highlighted that there was no footage from any farm in Ireland in last night’s programme.
Using sexed semen on his own farm, the senator said he will have no Friesian bull calf next year. “The issue of the 9% of the calf population that is exported is the Friesian bull calf percent,” he added.
“This story three years ago was about the transportation of calves, this story next year will be about how sexed semen has changed the industry and how there has been a dramatic change in it,” the senator said.