Staff at regional veterinary labs (RVL) are strongly resisting closure or downgrading of the services they provide. The staff makeup includes vets, expert laboratory technician and administrative personnel.

Members at each of the five regional labs made presentations to the Department of Agriculture group that was set up to review the future of the service.

The Irish Farmers Journal has now seen a number of these presentations.

Staff highlight the benefits of the current network of labs. “Effective surveillance is best carried out from within the local agricultural community,” one says. “Decreasing the current surveillance footprint would be a high-risk strategy.”

BSE was first detected in routine postmortems in RVLs and has now been effectively eradicated by RVL postmortems, one submission points out.

Staff have huge local knowledge and good relationships in their catchment areas with private vets, farmers, DVOs, Teagasc and third-level institutions, HSE, county councils, gardaí, NPWS officers, knackeries and the EPA.

The locations of the six RVLs – in Sligo, Athlone, Limerick, Cork, Kilkenny and Backweston – encourage submission of samples and carcases for testing and postmortems.

“Commuting distances are not excessive for most farmers,” staff at one lab said. “Previous work has shown a drop in submission rate of carcases outside 40km and 90% of carcase submissions come from within 65km of labs.”

Only fresh submissions provide reliable results, they pointed out.

Closing regional labs would reduce diagnostic rates and cut the Department’s surveillance footprint. Carcase quality would be sacrificed and vital information lost. Various other costs would rise, including transport.

Investment

Staff warn that investment is needed in the regional labs, in modernising facilities including lab equipment and IT, and in replacing retired staff.

They want the Department of Agriculture to see if more EU funding can be obtained for RVLs, including for the Sligo RVL, following Brexit.

RVLs were traditionally a good place to work and staff had a can-do attitude, the submissions said.

“Staff traditionally didn’t have a stick-in-the-mud, protectionist, civil service approach.”

Now the feeling is that RVLs are being deliberately starved of resources and run down. Staff are upset and demotivated.

The Government’s Action Plan for Rural Development, which was launched in January, pledges to protect vital local services – RVLs fall into that category, staff argue.

The Irish Farmers Journal exclusively revealed in January that the Department of Agriculture is carrying out a review of the RVL network, which could result in the closing of the three of the six labs.