Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Professor More for a very detailed presentation. He has studied TB eradication in this country in great depth. We want to be sure we do not eradicate the farmer while we are trying to cure the problem. On the cost-sharing between Government and industry, farmers have been paying for TB testing for several years. It is not an insignificant cost at farm level. When farmers agreed to pay for the test, the breakdown was 50:50 with the Government - I am open to correction on that. Before we agreed to pay for testing, there was a levy paid on all animals but we abandoned paying that and moved to paying for the tests.

The professor spoke about residual infection. Is he questioning the testing undertaken here and its failure to find all reactors or is it impossible to have a test that can identify residual infection? If the test is leaving residual infection that is a serious indictment of the testing regime. Would the Professor expand a bit on that? Is there a test that is better at identifying residual infection?

Professor More mentioned the lack of information about deer.

There are figures which show that TB was present in up to 16% of cattle in some parts of Wicklow. The reality is that farmers in some parts of Wicklow have stopped keeping bovines because they could not escape the disease.

There is an inconsistency in what Professor More has said. In most areas of Ireland there is no evidence to support the contention that deer act as a maintenance host for TB. I cannot understand why deer in Wicklow are treated differently to deer in Tipperary or elsewhere. In Tipperary, my county, there have been a few very bad outbreaks of TB over the past three years. A large proportion of them have occurred adjacent to forestry. I am most definitely convinced that deer are playing a part in this. Whether cattle are infecting deer or deer are infecting cattle does not matter, in my opinion. Deer are playing a part in the spread of the disease; they can pick it up from cattle and they have the ability to spread the disease over vast distances. While the professor made reference to cattle movements, deer travel large distances across the countryside and any farmer near forestry who experiences trouble with TB will not be convinced that there is no link.

There was a focus on bovine viral diarrhoea, BVD, and the failure to take out permanently infected, PI, animals. It was suggested that such an approach was bordering on criminal, and I agree with that. However, there was a lack of legislation when we started testing for BVD. Keeping PIs in place should not have been tolerated. Farmers are now counting the costs of that. We were told that the programme would last for three years, and that if we partook in a voluntary year at the beginning we would only have to tolerate it for two years. It has now been in place for six or seven years, and there is no end in sight. It is adding a cost to every calf that is born, and the farmer is carrying that cost.

The focus of the presentation we heard was that we need greater risk-based cattle control. That sent a shiver up my spine. The Department will be putting extra controls on cattle movements, which undoubtedly will put extra costs on the system. Again, the farmer will carry the can for that. Departmental officials appeared before this committee on a previous occasion. Professor More stated in his presentation that herds are at risk for ten years after a TB outbreak, and that the risk factor for those herds persists. If that is the case, and a black mark is going to be placed against a herd that has had TB in the last ten years, there will be a huge impact on cattle trading. Whether it is a calf, a weanling or a store, there will be a screen up in the mart stating that the herd the cow came from had cases of TB in the last six months or two years or whatever it is. That will practically discriminate against herds and put some farmers at a huge financial disadvantage. If that is the weapon we are going to try to use to eradicate TB, it will cause huge financial hardship and I cannot see how any farmer could agree to allow a system like that to operate.

Returning to the first point I made, on residual infection, the professor is an expert and I do not doubt his expertise for a minute. I have heard him speak in many different forums over the years but if farmers are doing a test with which we are not happy, as it is leaving reactors after it, we are not dealing with the hub of the issue. Professor More is an expert. He spoke about how Australia managed to eradicate TB, and given how much wildlife there is in that country, that was a very significant achievement. Did Australia operate the skin and blood test, as we do here, or had it an additional weapon in its armoury which helped it? Putting in extra controls for up to ten years on cattle movement and placing black marks against different herds does not seem practical to me. Brucellosis was not mentioned in the presentation. We eradicated that disease by very extensive testing using accurate tests. I was a farm leader before coming into this House and remember strongly defending at a meeting at parliament the idea that post-movement testing be kept in place for another three years. I said that it was essential, even though there were others at the table who did not agree. Brucellosis was finally eradicated. We were in that place a couple of years earlier, so we relaxed the testing regime and ended up back at square one. We were confident, with brucellosis, that we had an accurate test and that we were making progress. It was eradicated and we have even got to the stage where we have stopped testing for it in our herds now. It was a major achievement. If we had a test that left an element of residual infection afterwards, the idea that it might eradicate a disease baffles me. The ten-year restriction on herds is not practical, in my view.