Dispute over Johne’s scheme

I see that a dispute rumbles on over the sharing of costs under a new Johne’s eradication programme. The stakeholders involved in the talks have been thrashing out how best to fund the scheme for some time.

Despite a final stakeholders meeting scheduled for tomorrow (Friday), differences remain over who will pay for the scheme. The Dealer understands that the Department of Agriculture wants co-ops and marts to pay 50%, with the other 50% of the costs, as well all administration fees, being picked up by farmers.

For their part, the farm organisations and co-ops want a three-way agreement. This would see farmers, co-ops and marts as well as the Department equally share all the costs.

The Dealer thinks the latter idea would be the most fair and equitable to all involved. Time will tell, and hopefully a successful resolution can be made at Friday’s meeting.

John Moloney joins Coillte board

I see that outgoing Glanbia MD John Moloney has been appointed to the board of Coillte, the state owned forestry company. As well as serving on the board of DCC plc, John Moloney joined the board of Greencore Group plc as a non-executive director in February 2013. Coincidentally I’m told that John’s father Benny, who was a forester and Senior Inspector in the Forest Service, served on the first board of Coillte in 1989 following his retirement from the Department.

Ministers noticeably absent from GMO conference

Perhaps it was purely a timetabling issue, but the Dealer could not but notice that the slot to be filled by an Irish Government politician on the original EPA brochure for its GMO conference last week was noticeably vacant. The Dealer understands that at least two different ministers were approached to open the conference but both declined.

Is this a consequence of the taboo topic of GMO or a failure to recognise the immense contribution that related technologies are bringing to Irish exports? The Dealer wonders if this abandoned slot was a result of political naivety or uncertain leadership.

One scheduled speaker from the USDA was caught by the current official shutdown in the US civil service and prevented from travelling. However, he still managed to speak live to the conference on skype and provided a very good explanation of the major policy differences between the two trading blocks. In the US, they legislate on each new GMO event that is produced for the market while in the EU we have legislated for the biotechnology processes involved.

While the US speaker had a genuine excuse, one wonders why a few more TDs were not able to make the short journey to Dublin Castle.

There were no government TDs present to learn about the science behind the process – Denis Naughten was the only TD seen to be present.

Cat calls at the department

I am told that the Department of Agriculture’s animal welfare hotline (1850 211 990) has been very quiet in recent months, as superb grass growth helped push the fodder crisis of the spring into distant memory. In fact, the only calls to the helpline last week were from three individuals concerned about the welfare of the infamous cat “shot” in RTE drama Love Hate.