Animal Health Ireland (AHI) has sounded deep frustration with An Post’s handling of Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) samples posted by farmers – as the animal health body confirmed it is engaging with the postal service in a bid to iron out these issues for next year.

Issues reported by farmers using An Post to deliver BVD samples to labs include delivery delays, samples arriving damaged and samples getting lost.

AHI’s CEO Patrick Donohoe expressed particular frustration with these issues, as the prompt taking and sending off of BVD samples after calves land is the “number one thing farmers can do” to help eradicate the disease.

“I am hugely frustrated with the An Post side of things. With 99.9% of farmers, a calf will drop, they will tag it, collect the sample and get a batch ready ASAP,” Donohoe told the Oireachtas agriculture committee on Wednesday.

“The labs are doing 100% as well, but there is a middle ground there that is causing frustration for us and that is An Post.

“We have expressed our annoyance and concern to An Post. What they have relayed to us is that their priority is less on envelopes and more on packages and parcels.”

'Sufficient number'

However, Donohoe stated that the idea of farmers waiting with samples to gather a sufficient number to justify sending a parcel “goes against the message of finding out whether a calf is a PI”.

When this was relayed to An Post, the “message back to AHI was to register the post” but the AHI CEO said that “some farmers do that but not with a 100% efficacy either”.

The AHI boss told the committee that there are around “100ish herds” in which BVD PI calves were found this year and that this number will likely naturally increase, as not herds have calved.

“The trend is well improved on last year, a 44% reduction in the number of calves on last year, 17-18% fewer herds this year than last year. We are on a good road but we have to finish it now.”