Welsh dairy farmer loses 21 cows in one day to Bovine TB walesonline.co.uk - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from walesonline.co.uk Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
May 6, 2021 4:26 pm
Suggestions that on-farm valuations of TB reactor cattle could be ended in place of remote market price-based valuations have been slammed by one farm organisation.
Members of the TB Stakeholders Forum were recently shown key points from a report into on-farm market valuation (OFMV) of TB reactor cattle.
Professional services firm Grant Thornton was commissioned to carry out the report in January 2020.
According to the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA), the conclusion in the report suggest phasing out OFMV, and replacing it with an automated system whereby the farmer – or perhaps an advisor – would input the animal’s details on an online platform, and a figure of compensation would be determined through market value.
March 10, 2021 11:05 am
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has adopted an approach of “bury its head in the sand” to the issue of TB and deer.
That’s according to the general secretary of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) Eddie Punch, who spoke yesterday (Tuesday, March 9) at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture.
According to Punch, the information and research out there at present shows that the positivity rate in deer “is equivalent to that in cattle”.
Obviously it’s a problem in the cattle herd, but with the same positivity rate, the department doesn’t see deer as a problem. That’s just an unsustainable position, and it has to be tackled. Unless it is tackled we won’t make progress.
gov ie - Minister McConalogue welcomes positive start to the TB Implementation Working Group gov.ie - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gov.ie Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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.