Longford farming: ICMSA -Movement compliance certs carelessly misleading on new TB rules

There is growing anger amongst farmers in relation to implementation over the last fortnight of the TB Action Plan and, specifically, the many changes to the rules surrounding cattle purchases and sales.

The ICMSA Deputy President, Eamon Carroll, said that there is utter confusion around the new requirements, and he said there will have to be changes and clarifications, certainly in respect of the online compliance certificate.

“We are inundated with queries around the warning at the top of the compliance cert that is issued when a purchaser and a seller are completing a sale.

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"The warning displayed highlights that H animals in a herd are high risk by stating that ‘H - this animal was in an exposed cohort in a high-risk breakdown’ leading many farmers to assume that the animals concerned were from a high-risk herd and pull out of the sale.

"But the Department have confirmed that this wording is just a warning and that if the animal is deemed high-risk, then the ‘H’ will be after the ID of the animal. In that case, why put this carelessly misleading designation in at all?

"This is unfairly confusing farmers who are assuming they have a TB problem, when that is not the case.

"We repeatedly stressed to the Department that any warnings or restrictions had to be carefully identified and specific, or they ran the risk of undermining necessary cattle movement and making a bad situation worse.

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"The Department needs to immediately amend the system, remove the warning, and they need to do it immediately”, said the ICMSA Deputy President.

Mr Carroll concluded by saying that the first couple of weeks have been difficult for farmers to make sense of the changes in a way that went beyond the normal ‘teething problems’ associated with the introduction of new administrative and regulatory systems.

He said that ICMSA derived no satisfaction from pointing out the serious deficits in the Department’s communications strategy on this hugely important issue. Mr. Carroll called for a review of cattle sale data to determine the impact of the changes in procedure.