Mr. Dan Brennan:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to give an account of what happened on my farm over a 30-year period, from 1990. Cows were producing between 30% and 40% less than the national average. Cattle were growing at a rate half of the national average and the environment on our farm was severely damaged. Our cattle were extremely stunted and used to have a high mortality rate. My vet, Michael Lambe, tried various minerals to treat the problem. In 2002 he contacted the veterinary laboratory in Kilkenny and told them he had exhausted all avenues. He told them a toxic agent would have to be considered as the cause of these problems. A laboratory vet came out to our farm in January 2003 and spent at least one or two days per week on the farm for that winter. They saw that all of the cattle were losing weight. Every animal on the farm was affected. In winter of 2003-04 Teagasc drew up a feeding trial. In the first half of the winter the cattle throve normally and in the second half they lost weight. In 2004, the veterinary college visited my farm. A professor said that my farm needed to be looked at from the perspective of a helicopter as something had to be wrong in the area to cause this. The Kilkenny laboratory were still on the farm for one or two days per week. In July 2004 I was contacted by the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, which told me that our farm was in the high fallout area from Ormonde Brick factory. In September 2004, representatives from the Moorepark centre visited our farm and a vet took samples from our eave chutes and the results showed there was cadmium present in the eave chutes. In the winter of 2004-05, the Department undertook a feeding trial and employed an independent person to feed the cattle. This involved feeding cattle on my farm and on a control farm three miles away. Included in the feeding trial were ten cattle from the Abbotstown farm in Dublin. All cattle on the control farm gained 0.67 kg per day while all cattle on our farm did very poorly or lost weight. This even included the cattle brought into the farm from Abbotstown, which lost 0.5 kg per day in the last part of the trial. It pointed towards something wrong in our area, given that my silage would work on a farm three miles away but would not work on my own farm at the same time. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine told me it was caused by my disease management. In 2005, there was also more environmental damage observed on the farm. In 2006, the UCD veterinary college again became involved and at a meeting in Kilkenny in June 2006, it concluded that animal disease was not the problem on the farm. Despite this, the Department issued a report saying that my disease management had caused a problem. The veterinary laboratory in Kilkenny left, and UCD veterinary college took over. They decided to do a similar trial on our farm for the winter of 2006-07. They did this and used a control farm as well. For that winter, Ormonde Brick was closed, and the cattle on both farms throve in exactly the same way. UCD veterinary college stayed with us for 18 months, taking blood samples every two weeks. They took ten of my cattle to Abbotstown, and grazed ten of their own cattle on my farm. The trial went on for 16 months. While the factory was open, the cattle were gaining 0.21 kg per day. When the factory was closed the cattle were putting on 0.78 kg per day. Jim Crilly contacted the veterinary college in 2007 and told them to test the bloods for cadmium. In December 2008, the veterinary college contacted my vets, Michael Lambe and Tom Slevin, and told them that our cattle had 95% of the symptoms of cadmium poisoning. On 18 March 2009, UCD veterinary college rang me and told me that it was not allowed to give me the report. In October 2009 the deputy chief veterinary inspector rang me to say the cadmium found in the blood of our cattle was accidentally put into it in the laboratory and did not come from Ormonde Brick factory. What is important here is that the cattle lost weight during the trial in 2007, which was the same time the samples got contaminated in the lab. In January 2007, we took the case to the petitions committee in Brussels. They visited the farm in 2007 and were shocked at the number of dead trees on our farm. We went to Brussels in 2010, 2011 and 2012. In 2012, they agreed to do a scientific review of all the data but this never happened. Instead they just handed our case back to Ireland two years later. The present position is that, since the Ormonde Brick factory closed in 2008, our cows have gone to 1,300 gallons of milk, which is doubled in the last ten years. They are the same breed of cow. Our two-year-old cattle used to be 320 kg at two years old. Now they are 520 kg at that age. The environment on our farm has fully recovered.