There is “utter confusion” among farmers on the status of the new tuberculosis (TB) rules and on when they are due to be introduced, Eamon Carroll, deputy president of the ICMSA has said.

Carroll pointed out that despite the surge in TB throughout 2025, the response plan was not launched until September 2025 and now, just over six months later, farmers were no wiser about what exactly is going to happen and when those changes will take place.

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Carroll commented that TB is evidently a major issue at farm level, causing great financial and personal burden as well as farm management issues for families if it is identified on-farm.

“The only thing that we know for certain at this stage is that the Department is intent on imposing very specific rules on farmers and very little on themselves or other actors in the cattle supply chain.

"We’ve been pointing this out repeatedly and we still think it must be addressed by the Minister. If we are to have clear targets on farmers, then we also need to have similarly clear verifiable targets and metrics on the Department themselves, on marts, on dealers and on feedlots. It cannot continue to be just a one-way system only applied to farmers,” Carroll stated.

“We are becoming alarmed as we get reports from across the country that the new rules are being implemented in some places and not in others, along with different interpretations of the same rule depending on location. That’s just unacceptable and defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.

“If the Department is serious in relation to bringing farmers with them on TB, then it should immediately communicate with all farmers setting out in detail the new rules. Notably, how they will actually work and, critically, on what date the rules will be applied?

“Farmers were told in early 2025 that changes were coming in relation to bTB, a year later and farmers do not know where they stand on such a serious matter.

"State of utter confusion"

"The Department needs to immediately clear this state of utter confusion by communicating directly with farmers setting out the changes that are to be introduced, when those changes are being introduced and what changes the other actors in the cattle supply chain are going to see and how those changes will be measured,” concluded the ICMSA deputy president.