The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA) has said that any measures to tighten rules around young calf movement should “protect the integration” between the dairy and beef sectors.
A recent meeting of the Calf Stakeholder Forum saw a number of possible rule changes put on the table that would restrict movements on calves below certain weights and ages, along with a number of other possible restrictions.
These restrictions include a higher minimum age, and the introduction of a minimum weight, below which calves cannot be moved from the holding of birth.
Commenting on these possible future restrictions, ICMSA president Pat McCormack said that encouraging best practice should take precedence over restricting when calves can be moved.
“The view that we expressed at the meeting was that there is a lot of farm-to-farm movements and they are done in the best practice and for the best of reasons, for the seller and the buyer, where they might like to get young stock to put them on an automatic calf feeder,” he said.
“At three or four days of age, that is far easier than at three or four weeks of age,” McCormack added.
According to the ICMSA president, further integration between the dairy and beef sectors should be the priority.
“So we should be encouraging best practice, we should be encouraging integration of our industry, and whatever decisions made need to protect the integration that’s already there,” McCormack said.
Other potential changes to calf movement rules outlined at the Calf Stakeholder Forum include:
- Marts setting a minimum age and weight below which they will not accept calves;
- Graduated increases in the minimum age and weight for calves to move off their holding of birth, with a slight increase in 2024 and larger increase in 2025, allowing dairy farmers time to adopt to longer calf retention on-farm;
- Raising the minimum age and weight at which calves can be exported to other EU member states;
- Marts supporting brokered sales of calves where the calves move directly from the selling farm to the buying farm without physically moving through the mart.
The forum also discussed methods to improve calf rearing, such as providing more technical support and instruction on calf rearing; providing for more effective risk sharing between dairy farmers and contract calf rearers; and exploring the possibility of a European Innovation Partnership (EIP) for the sector.
Changes on breeding and management were also put forward at the meeting.
This would include dairy processors introducing codes of practice for their suppliers relating to breeding decisions and calf rearing. These would address issues such as choice of bull; genotyping; no longer using Jersey or Jersey-cross bull genetics; calf health; and welfare metrics.
It was also suggested that dairy processors support risk-sharing models between dairy farmers and calf rearers.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has said that these potential measures “need much more discussion”.
Stephen Arthur, the IFA’s Dairy Committee chairperson, said: “A number of options were tabled by the [Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine] at the latest Calf Stakeholder Forum…relating to the movement of calves.
“Many of these proposals were not discussed at any significant length and absolutely no timeframe or specific proposals relating to increasing minimum movement age were agreed,” Arthur added.
“We are absolutely committed to ensuring that calf welfare is optimised and any measures or proposals which will further strengthen this require strong consideration. However, many of the proposals suggested by the department simply will not deliver this but instead will place needless additional costs on farmers.”
According to the IFA, the proposal to extend the number of days before a calf can move off farm is of particular concern.
“The majority of stakeholders including ourselves all disagreed with the introduction of any such extension,” Arthur said.
“Breeding strategies and calf management are much more important for the outcome of calves than blanket extension of regulations relating to minimum age or minimum weight,” the IFA dairy chair added.
“Furthermore, we also do not want to dictate what breeds farmers can and cannot use on their farm. Instead, we want to encourage farmers to adopt the breeding technologies available on the ground such as genotyping, sexed semen, and the use of high Dairy Beef Index (DBI) bulls.”
The IFA is also calling a greater presence of department officials at livestock sales to promote better calf welfare.
However, according to Arthur, this proposal “has been largely ignored by the department, who want to shift responsibilities onto other stakeholders”.