DEAR EDITOR,

As a suckler farmer, some years back I managed to select/breed and produce top-quality cows using my own records and charts. I was informed by a new organisation called the ICBF that the majority of my 70 cows were 4- and 5-star cows.

When time came to sell these cows, I advertised them as such. A man, Ger O’Donoghue, west Cork, who needed to expand and upgrade his star ratings purchased them. All good, you might say, until I got a phone call from him a few days later to tell me that my cows had now been rated as zero stars after entering his herd which meant he wasn’t compliant with BDGP. We were stunned, angry and I felt so annoyed and upset at the financial situation he found himself in.

He didn’t get much sympathy from the ICBF. Who exactly made this decision that the status of cows could materially change overnight? Nonsense. The ICBF, along with many other groups, were proud to stand on my farm and highlight the “sought-after” characteristics of my stock. If a similar situation happened with a dairy pedigree herd, there would be outright war. Our belief and trust in ICBF also went down to zero.