The Department of Agriculture must start paying the cost of testing calves for BVD, IFA animal health chair Bert Stewart said.

The planned switch to a lower-cost surveillance regime has turned out to be a non-runner and therefore costly tissue-tag testing must continue, he said. The cost is about €7.5m per annum.

In addition, the cost of tissue-tagging calves is to rise by up to €1m per anum because of changes proposed in the new cattle tag system, he warned. He will outline farmer concerns in a meeting with Department officials on Friday.

When the BVD eradication programme was introduced, tissue tags and laboratory testing were to operate for three years, with the cost borne by farmers.

After that, lower cost surveillance methods were to be introduced. But last Thursday, disease experts indicated that there was no viable alternative to the current system. The proposed sero-surveillance was not viable because of the relatively small size of Irish herds, calving profile and herd management practices. This was outlined to a meeting of the implementation group of Animal Health Ireland, on which farm organisations sit.

“Minister Creed must review the programme and introduce a new funding model,” Stewart said. “Most of the relevant information was available when the programme was first drawn up.”

Stewart rejected the claim by AHI that a lower cost surveillance system was not viable because a small number of farmers were retaining PI calves. He criticised the Department for delays in getting payments to farmers to compensate for disposal of PI calves. “No 2015 payments have been paid to farmers and there have been unacceptable delays in issuing restriction notices and neighbour notifications.”

Meanwhile, farmers face higher costs under the new requirement of the Department that all calves be tagged with a new dual-purpose tissue tag, Stewart warned.

This tag would replace the current one and would allow genomic testing of beef animals in addition to BVD testing. The IFA has been told that the new dual-purpose tag will be more costly than the tissue tag now in use, Stewart said. He is trying to establish from manufacturers what the difference in price would be.

In addition, he said some of the laboratories that carry out BVD testing have told him they would have to increase their test charges because of the new tissue tag.

Some would have to reapply for international accreditation to retain Department of Agriculture approval. The design of dual-purpose tags means some would have to revert to Elisa test procedures, thus losing the cost reductions made possible by use of the PCR test.