18 MARCH 2021
ICSA Animal Health & Welfare chair Hugh Farrell has strenuously rejected comments made by Department of Agriculture officials in defence of their decision to issue farmers with TB Herd History Risk Statements. “There was categorically no agreement that these letters should be sent out in the manner in which they were sent,” he said.
Mr Farrell was referencing comments made during the Oireachtas Committee hearing on the TB Eradication Programme last week, (Tues 9 March), where department officials defended their decision to issue the letters by referring to an interim report entitled Bovine TB Stakeholder Forum Interim Report – Disease Policy and Working in Partnership, published in July 2019. This report states, “When farmers have a breakdown, the notification sent to them by DAFM (i.e., the “reactor pack”) could be amended to include a summary of their bTB history and of inward movements into their herd in the previous five years.”
Mr Farrell said this statement explicitly refers to farmers who have recently had a reactor identified. “The passage refers to reactor packs which indicates that this type of letter could be used as part of an overall response to a TB breakdown. It in no way implies that this type of letter would be – or should be – sent out to all farmers.”
“The reality is that these letters were a product of farmer representatives being ignored, while department officials drove on with dubious actions such as explicit herd categorisation which had been categorically rejected at the TB Forum.”
ENDS