Tipperary farm leader says new measures involve all TB burden being lumped onto farmers
Eamon Carroll has issued a statement on the matter
Speaking following the latest TB Forum meeting, the Loughmore farmer serving as Deputy President of ICMSA, Eamon Carroll, has said that the association “could not and will not” ask farmers very significant portions of the proposed TB measures presented at today's meeting.
Mr Carroll the fact that would ‘jump out’ from any reasonable reading of the new proposals was that what appeared to be the whole burden of the proposals – financial and regulatory – was to be placed on the farmers with little or no obligations being asked of any other element to the surging bTB crisis across the state.
Mr Carroll said that thousands of farmers were already suffering severe financial distress due to bTB and while some factors were within farmers’ control – very many were not.
That fact did not seem to occur to the Department based on these proposals which seemed to involve imposing a raft of new burdens, costs and obligations on the only group actually taking the financial and psychological hit from the surge in bTB – affected farmers.
“Basically, the new approach seems to be impose a load of new rules on the farmers, who are the only ones getting ‘hit’ by the surge in bTB. While allowing everyone else – including the Department itself – to carry on doing just what they have been doing and failing, just as they have been failing”, said Mr Carroll.
“Put more pressure on the group already under the most pressure – the farmers – and leave everyone else alone”, continued the Tipp ICMSA veteran.
The ICMSA Deputy President noted that the association has repeatedly called on the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine to bring forward the scientific rationale - backed with clear data referring to each measure presented today to the Forum - so that each measure can be discussed on its own merits.
He said no such data had been presented to the Forum and there was no evidence at all that any of the measures proposed by ICMSA or any of the other farm organisations – at the request of the Department - had been considered or incorporated into the measures put to the Forum today.
Mr Carroll said that, most regrettably, there was no evidence that the measures brought forward today would deal with all the sources of infection. But they would most certainly and unfairly target farmers.
“We can only speak for our own association and our proposals were impacting on all sources of potential TB infection, and some would have ‘landed’ squarely on our members. But we believe that the situation is urgent and requires clear actions and hard decisions. We didn’t get those hard decisions today; we got a set of proposals that would fall 90% directly on farmers and nobody else. And even ta that, they won’t halt and reverse the bTB crisis, so we have something that is both unfair and ineffective. It’s a wasted opportunity”, said the ICMSA Deputy President.