Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue. \Philip Doyle
The new TB implementation working group set up as part of the Bovine TB Stakeholder Forum and chaired by Dr Sean Brady had its first meeting on Tuesday.
Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has welcomed the discussions on how to implement the actions in the strategy, which is hoped will reduce the threat of TB to farmers.
The Bovine TB Eradication Programme is the largest animal health programme, with over nine million individual TB tests carried out each year on more than 110,000 farms.
Disease levels have been rising since 2016 and pose a threat to trade access, with trading partners regularly seeking assurances that the programme is effective.
Ireland the only EU state with continuing significant TB challenge
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March 4, 2021 4:56 pm
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue has welcomed what he called the “positive start” to the Finance Working Group that was recently set up under the TB Stakeholder Forum.
The group, which is chaired by Gerry Kiely, held its first meeting today (Thursday, March 4).
“The Bovine TB Eradication Programme is our largest animal health programme and is subject to substantial financial support from farmers and taxpayers,” the minister noted.
In recognition of this, the terms of reference for the Finance Working Group tasks them with a heavy workload, particularly the need to ensure that the TB Programme is sustainably and appropriately funded.
Following a meeting of the TB Stakeholder Forum yesterday (Thursday, February 4), concerns have been raised over a lack of farmer representation on one of the three working groups that are to be established under the forum.
These three groups are: an implementation group; a finance group; and a science group. While farmer representation has been agreed to for the former two, the science group does not yet have guaranteed farmer representation.
These concerns were raised after the meeting by Hugh Farrell, the animal health chairperson of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA).
Farrell said that he hoped the establishment of the three groups would be beneficial, but that “farmers must have representation on all three”.
TB Strategy: How will the programme be funded to 2030?
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine published the new TB Eradication Strategy today (Wednesday, January 27), covering the period up to 2030.
AgriLand covered the main points of concern for farmers in an earlier article today, which can be found here.
However, apart from the ‘on-farm’ facets of the strategy, another key point is how the new programme will be paid for.
Annual financing of the TB programme represents a significant investment by farmers, the state and the EU. This investment is a prerequisite for accessing the [EU] internal market and market access for several third countries [non-EU member countries].
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