DEAR EDITOR,

The only way to open the eyes of farmers is to highlight the mortality in exporters’ yards at the moment. I was in an exporter’s yard last week who lost weanlings to a pneumonia outbreak in the last few weeks, and it was a tough place to be.

The word on the ground is that this is an attempt on behalf of the exporters to pull prices. The Irish Farmers Journal has a responsibility to get across the message that exporters are responsible for the booming trade we have at present and a number of points should be made:

  • There’s an argument that the exporters should be doing the vaccinating upon arrival. The antibody production involved with a vaccine is greatly hampered by stress – stress through a mart is inevitable for any weanling. The damage is done once weanlings contract respiratory disease in a mart.
  • This was always a problem and has not been invented this year to stagnate the prices. People must realise that the capital required to buy large amounts of weanlings is huge this year. Any lost weanling is a huge financial hit and farmers must understand this.
  • Vaccinating weanlings should be thought of as the underpinning of the export trade. Transport fever is another ill factor commonly associated with the travel of weanlings to another country and encountered on their arrival.

    • This is an inevitable eventuality associated with export but, as I’ve stated above, is exacerbated by both the financial burden of these animals and the added cost of possible respiratory diseases. Exporters are not on the pigs back once they buy these weanlings. The standards their clients set them are of course constantly pressuring them.

    The bottom line is that exporters have of course their own pocket in mind when broaching this boycott, but also the reputation of the Irish weanlings to maintain on foreign ground. If farmers are pushed to vaccinate, they can be assured of the greater good of the market in return.