Draft legislation will be brought before the Agriculture and Rural Development(ARD) committee next Tuesday (8 December) to make it compulsory for farmers to test new born calves for the Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) virus.

Making the announcement on Monday, Minister O’Neill said that legislation was coming forward with “a view to it coming into operation on 1 March 2016.”

A voluntary scheme was set up by the Animal Health and Welfare NI (AHWNI) in January 2013, approximately 4,500 of the 18,000 cattle herds in NI currently participate in it.

Introduction of the compulsory phase of the scheme has met several delays. The most recent was last month when department officials could not come before the ARD committee to present on the scheme due to problems with the programme’s database.

The legislation will require aborted and stillbirth calves to be tested also and for persistently infected animals only to be sold to an abattoir or knackery.

Minister O’Neill said that the time between today’s announcement and the introduction of the compulsory phase of the scheme in March would allow herd keepers time to use up any standard herd identification tags and also to allow AHWNI to make any necessary operational arrangements.

The minister estimates that the programme will cost the industry £5m over a three year period but estimated that the financial benefits of eradicating BVD would out weight this by ten times.

She said: “We will be taking an important step towards eradicating BVD from the herd in the north. That would certainly be a considerable achievement and will bring BVD compulsory testing here in line with the rest of Ireland.”

Minister O’Neill added that this will be the first time that AWHNI will implement legislation relating to a production disease.