Seven of the country’s biggest live exporters have made the shock decision to pull out of marts next week and stop buying Irish weanlings.

So far this year, a total of 34,080 weanlings have been exported out of the country. This figure is down 1.3% on the 2024 number of 34,514 weanlings.

The next few weeks will see peak numbers at sales and the news of exporters boycotting marts for a week will be a worry for farmers with weanlings to sell.

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It’s believed that some Irish exporters have experienced problems with respiratory disease in the last number of weeks, with one exporter losing a number of animals as a result of a respiratory infection outbreak over the last few days.

The exporters say they will not attend marts from Monday 6 October for a period of seven days to highlight the need for farmers to vaccinate weanlings against respiratory disease prior to sale.

No choice

Exporters say they have no choice but to force farmers to rethink how they are presenting animals for sale. They say they need animals vaccinated against respiratory disease to avoid issues in their own yards and issues in customers' yards in mainland Europe.

Exporters say they need assurances from farmers that weanlings have been vaccinated before sale or they won’t be able to continue to buy them.

It’s unclear as of yet what proof, if any, will be required by exporters before they purchase weanlings in marts.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands a number of live exporters are due to meet Animal Health Ireland (AHI) this Thursday to discuss if AHI can help in anyway.

Some mart managers have been encouraging farmers to vaccinate weanlings ahead of sale, with some even planning special sales of vaccinated weanlings later in October.

The move has been criticised by some other mart managers, citing the issue of vaccination being a farmer's choice and highlighting that distorting the market isn’t an appropriate action, especially coming into some of the busiest weeks of weanling sales.