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Some 89,671 bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) tissue tags have been lost since 2015.
This has cost farmers €192,000 over the past four years between re-ordering BVD tissue tags and postal costs.
Farmers have complained for many years of losing BVD tags through the postal service, with some farmers losing up to 70 tags at a time.
One farmer told the Irish Farmers Journal he had contacted An Post, to be told envelopes carrying BVD tag samples were often accidentally shredded in automatic mail sorters and samples were “littering” the floor of An Post’s Portlaoise sorting facility.
However, tags can also be lost through farmer error.
On average, just under 21,000 BVD tags are lost every year and the loss of tags also costs farmers time in terms of re-ordering and re-tagging calves before calves can be sold from farms during the busy spring period.
An Post has previously blamed flimsy envelopes issued by BVD laboratories and insufficient postage paid for BVD tags failing to arrive at laboratories.
Enfer labs, one of the main testing facilities, recently assured farmers that labs would be contacted by An Post and any additional postage would be paid by the lab through the farmer’s account.
Unsatisfactory
An Post told the Irish Farmers Journal that this was an unsatisfactory arrangement and urged farmers to pay the correct postage and double-wrap BVD samples when posting.
BVD is highly infectious and testing on every calf born is compulsory, with the number of persistently infected calves expected to fall to 400 this year, according to David Graham, chief executive of Animal Health Ireland.
An Post has recently increased postage rates to €2 for every 10 BVD samples sent. This means farmers will pay €467,892 in postage for BVD samples this year.
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