Two years after first signalling her intention to introduce a compulsory Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) eradication scheme in NI, Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill has finally confirmed that all breeding cattle herds will be required to undertake BVD testing from 1 March 2016.

The scheme is being led by Animal Health and Welfare NI (AHWNI), an industry body under the chairmanship of former UFU president John Thompson. They first introduced a voluntary eradication scheme from 1 January 2013, with a view to having a compulsory scheme in place by 2014.

To allow for a compulsory scheme, DARD must make the necessary legislation. However, the Department was unwilling to proceed until they received assurances about the financial sustainability of AHWNI.

The Department also wanted assurances that AHWNI had a suitable database in place to hold all the testing information. Meeting those two requirements has taken considerable time.

Once the scheme does come into force, it will be a requirement to tissue tag all newborn calves, including stillbirths and abortions, for an initial period of at least three years. Where an animal is persistently infected (PI) with the disease, it will be an offence to move it, except to a knackery or meat plant. The advice is that all PI animals should be culled once the disease is confirmed.

As well as the cost of euthanising a calf, there is the added cost of tissue tagging. A set of BVD tags costs around £5.15, compared to £1.70 for a conventional tag set. That works out at approximately £5m of added tagging costs on to farmers over a three-year period.

However, announcing the scheme, Minister O’Neill pointed to the financial gains from eradicating BVD (improved herd performance and productivity), suggesting that it would outweigh these tagging costs by a ratio of 10 to one.

In his statement welcoming the initiative, UFU president Ian Marshall estimated that eradication of BVD could add £30m per year to the local agricultural sector.

“This makes it imperative that farmers take a proactive approach, by removing all persistently infected (PI) animals within their herd,” the UFU president said.

That goes to the heart of the key problem facing the compulsory scheme in NI – will farmers actually remove all PI calves?

The evidence from the Republic of Ireland, where an eradication scheme has been in place since 2012, perhaps suggests not. Analysis earlier this year showed that over 1,000 herds had retained PI calves, and this was despite compensation being in place for PI animals. This support is continuing into 2016, with €140 of compensation available for disposal of a beef-bred PI calf, and €120 for a dairy bred heifer calf. No compensation will be available in NI.

The other major issue still to be resolved is what happens to farmers in NI who complied with the voluntary phase of the scheme. Those who joined in 2013 were told that the scheme would be compulsory in 2014, and the first year would count towards the three years of mandatory testing.