The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) has paid tribute to its former chief executive Brian Wickham, who died last weekend following a long battle with cancer.

Originally from New Zealand, but for a long time living in Clonakilty, Co Cork, Brian was central to the establishment of the integrated, shared database for Irish cattle breeding.

Ireland remains one of the only countries in the world where the breeding database belongs to the farmers, rather than a commercial company.

The ICBF statement highlighted Wickham’s contribution to Ireland’s cattle breeding industry.

“From 1998 to 2012, Brian was the driving force in establishing our national, integrated database for cattle breeding in Ireland. ICBF was formed in 2000 to establish and operate the database, as well as to provide genetic evaluations for Irish farmers. The EBI and €uro-star indexes came as a direct result of Brian’s determination and ability to take a long-term view of the industry and what it needed,” it said.

“Brian was always so passionate about the role that cattle breeding could play in improving the profitability of farmers.

“His principled view of ensuring that the ICBF database was farmer owned and controlled, set Ireland in a unique position in terms of cattle breeding. He always found the positives, even in the most challenging of negotiations and his integrity was always beyond reproach,” the ICBF said.

Wickham officially took up his role at ICBF in 1998 and retired as CEO in 2012. In 2019, he took up a role leading the New Zealand animal evaluation organisation, which is the breeding arm of Dairy NZ in New Zealand.

In 2021, an Irish conference was held to discuss: “How did Brian Wickham change the world of Irish cattle breeding?”