Mr. Dan Brennan:

I will get to that in a second. My point is that Teagasc then had to get a specialist from Kildalton College to say my sheds were right. The Senator has asked me where was Teagasc. Teagasc did stand up but each time the Department threw a spanner in the works.

I will explain about the feed trial. Thirty-six cattle were picked out on my farm. There were two pens of mine left on my farm and two pens of mine were left on Martin Healy's farm. They hired a man and put into the diet feeder what would feed 18 cattle. They fed nine cattle on my farm. A tractor was driven to Martin Healy's farm and the other nine cattle were fed exactly the same amount and same mix of silage. Then they put Martin's silage into the diet feeder at Martin's place and fed another pen of nine cattle at Martin's farm and they drove back to our farm and fed the other pen of mine on Martin's silage. Then they had ten bullocks from the Department from Abbottstown and they fed them with my silage.

The end result was that my silage and my cattle would work in Martin Healy's yard, my cattle and Martin Healy's silage would work in his yard, my cattle in my yard with my silage would not work, and my cattle in my yard with Martin Healy's silage would not work at the exact same time. The Abbotstown cattle were given my silage. They really fell asunder because they brought in a new animal that had been nearly worse. Our cattle had a slight tolerance for what was wrong. That feeding trial was fairly conclusive to me.

The first time we noticed something was wrong was when the laboratory in Kilkenny said it would not accept this. The Teagasc college in Kildalton weighed the cattle. It brought down its own scales from Abbotstown and started to re-weigh the cattle but after weighing three cattle, it realised the trial was correct. Then it said it was my disease management that caused it. Each vet that came out to me gave me, I will not say abuse, but smart comments that we had an invisible disease problem with symptomless salmonella - stupid stuff that defeats intelligence. One shed was too long, another was too wide while another was too high. This nonsense went on for three years.

Mr. Walshe said I got in cattle for two years. For six and a half years, I got in cattle for the Department and the veterinary college and co-operated 100% with them. I used to get up at 4 a.m. to milk my cows to be ready for the veterinary college for 6 a.m. to catch 77 cattle every second Monday, and I did this year in year out. In the end, the veterinary college rang me. Tom Slevin and Michael Lambe were the two vets. Tom Slevin was the vet in Castlecomer while Michael Lambe was the vet in Kilkenny. They left the report on our kitchen table in December 2008 and said it was cadmium poisoning. The cattle had 95% of the symptoms and the report was going to the Department but they would not be happy. They came back in February and said it would take another month to get the report together. They rang me on 18 March. The professor at the veterinary college said they were not allowed to give me the report and more or less cut off contact. I then got a phone call from the deputy chief veterinary inspector in October 2009 telling me a little glitch happened on my farm and the cadmium did not come out of the big factory but was accidentally put into the samples when they were digesting the samples. At the stroke of a pen, the whole thing was gone.