Farmers buying and selling cattle are to be subject to risk-based trading from 2021 under the new TB strategy, the Irish Farmers Journal understands.

Earlier this year, letters issued to farmers with cattle which categorised their herd as being at a high or low risk of TB and from next year, these could come into play when farmers are trading cattle.

While it is not clear how risk-based trading will work, displaying a herd’s TB status on mart boards was mooted in the past, much to the anger of farm organisations.

Farmers are also to be paid to remove cattle which test inconclusive for TB.

The risk of these inconclusives will be communicated to the farmer, then these animals will have a blood test and again at “regular intervals” while they remain in the herd.

In the event of a TB breakdown, “these historical inconclusive animals will be removed as dangerous in-contacts”.

Cattle in high-risk herds ?may require pre-movement TB testing.

The latest draft of the strategy says the definition of these herds would be based on epidemiological research recently completed which examined the risk factors associated with recurrence of TB.

Risk factors include the length of the original breakdown, having had previous breakdowns, herd size and herd type.

“It is likely that the number of herds coming under this definition would be of the order of 500,” the strategy says.

All of these measures are to be thrashed out in the coming weeks at technical working groups made up of the Department and farmers.

The Department of Agriculture has budgeted to spend €21m in compensation to farmers in 2021, an increase from the €17.3m paid to date this year.

Some €4.6m is budgeted for wildlife control and €2.2m for research.

The Department spent €56m on the TB programme in 2020, farmers spent €35m and the EU spent €4m.