‘We stuck to our guns’ on brucellosis - Department

The Department of Agriculture’s deputy chief veterinary official Michael Sheahan has refuted claims that TB eradication efforts have created an industry for monetary gain that some would like to see continue indefinitely.

Farmer frustrations with the Department’s TB eradication programme came to the fore at an IFA meeting held on the subject last Wednesday in Cootehill, Co Cavan.

Farmers expressed grievances from the floor with the level of compensation available to those who experience breakdowns, stating that some stand to gain financially from testing cattle, vaccinating badgers and administering the programme within the Department.

The association’s animal health chair TJ Maher stated that the “costs of TB are borne by farmers more than anyone else” and said that the labour required to gather and handle cattle for TB tests costs farmers €25m on top of the €30m paid yearly to vets for skin tests.

Mid-1990s

Sheahan offered the brucellosis eradication programme that was losing pace with 30,000 in the mid-1990s as an example of where similar claims had been levelled against the Department and vets.

“At the time, I was listening to the exact same sort of lines: ‘Brucellosis, sure that’s an industry’ and ‘vets want to keep it going forever’.

“Nothing could have been further from the truth. We tackled brucellosis full-on. We threw all the resources we could at it and, by 2006, we had the last case of brucellosis in this country.

“People said it couldn’t be done. The IFA said it couldn’t be done.

“They wanted us to vaccinate cattle and all this kind of stuff, but we stuck to our guns and we eradicated brucellosis by working together.”