New proposals to prevent TB herd history from being made available on mart boards may have been scuppered after a leading professor made negative comments about Irish cattle on last week (Tuesday, February 26).
Irish Farmers’ Association’s (IFA’s) Animal Health chairman Pat Farrell – who is also a member of the TB Forum – said that while a number of the representatives agreed with the department’s proposals on the mart boards saga – not everyone is fully convinced of its benefits.
TB Forum
Farrell said there has been five meetings so far of the TB Forum and three of those were focused primarily on the herd history on mart boards issue.
He also pointed out that IFA and the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS) were totally opposed to herd history being disclosed in this way.
As a forum we did feel that we had reached some headway on the situation.
Farrell continued: “We were particularly confident when the department put forward its proposals on the matter but, unfortunately, now we have the comments from Professor Simon Moore and they have not helped at all.”
Moore claimed during a Joint Oireachtas Committee Meeting on Agriculture earlier this week that Irish cattle complying with EU Trade Directive criteria for TB were not safe to trade.
He also pointed to the fact that “a risk-based approach” would be the only way to successfully eradicate the disease.
Meanwhile, the department has put a plan in place to achieve eradication by 2030.
Facts and figures
Farrell went on to say that the department had proposed that farmers disclose their own TB history at the marts.
“The department is hoping that if farmers are honest about their own herd history then those who are effected will be exposed; the only difficulty with that is that if there is a TB history in the herd the stock in question will be devalued,” he added.
Meanwhile, the latest TB statistics indicate that 97% of farmers’ herds are disease free. That highlights the fact that just 3% of herds are effected with TB.
Farrell also pointed to separate department statistics showing that 7% of TB is associated with cattle movement.
This means that TB can be contracted from wildlife, for example, or that the herd is contiguous to a bad outbreak.
He added: “Factory lesions also need to be considered. Because of factory lesions some animals are locked up – in most cases they don’t have TB – then they have a TB history and there are farmers out there who are getting caught up in this.”
Farrell says the TB Forum has asked the department to examine current controls in respect of TB and in particular the controls around factory lesions.
“There needs to be a better system in relation to this. Also, IFA is totally opposed to the vaccination of badgers, especially in light of what happened in Co. Monaghan but, unfortunately, I would feel that our requests in relation to this have fallen on deaf ears,” he said.
Department of Agriculture
According to the department, in 2017, the bTB Eradication Programme cost €84 million with the Exchequer contributing €42 million. EU co-funding provided €10 million and the remaining €32 million was paid by farmers through the cost of the annual herd bTB test and disease levies.
The department admitted that while this expenditure represents a significant investment in animal health, it also indicates “a drain on scarce financial resources” that could be better directed at initiatives that grow the broader agri-food sector.
Bovine TB levels and the complexity of the Eradication Programme have evolved since the 1950s.
The department continued: “However, if we use expenditure in 2017 as a ‘standard’ year, total expenditure on the bTB Programme in today’s prices would amount to over €5.5 billion.
“Minister Creed has publicly stated the ambition to eradicate bTB by 2030 and by this time another €1 billion will have been spent if current trends continue.”