A lack of focus on badger density reduction emerged as a key point of contention the IFA has with the Department of Agriculture’s TB eradication programme at an association meeting in Cootehill, Co Cavan, last Wednesday.

IFA animal health chair TJ Maher questioned the efficacy of moving areas from badger removals to badger vaccination.

TB herd incidence – the number of new herds going down over a 12-month period - tracked around 2.5% when badger vaccination was first rolled out, but is now approaching the 6% mark.

“At a time when we continue to have increasing [reactor] numbers, it is unacceptable that the resources are not available to deal with the spread of disease on the ground,” he stated.

Moving cattle

Maher said that ongoing and worsening “significant breakdowns” in vaccination areas are not the result of farmers “moving cattle up and down the road to one another”.

“But yet when a townland becomes infected, suddenly, all the farms up and down along these townlands are becoming infected.”

The association’s animal health executive Tomas Bourke outlined that the IFA is also “fundamentally opposed” to the introduction of the “risk-based trading narrative” that the Department “continues to trot out”.

“This would stick a red flag on any herd that has had TB within the last 10 years but allow these animals to be traded, simply devaluing them.

“The alternative approach would consider compensating for scenarios where there are higher-risk animals identified in farms that may be still infected [but not showing up in tests].

“That is a position we are prepared to discuss.”