Animal Health Ireland (AHI) is assessing the feasibility of a voluntary infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) programme, the industry body’s chair has confirmed.
Speaking at a recent stakeholder event in Backweston, AHI chair James Lynch said the organisation was “seeing how we might progress a voluntary IBR programme”.
However, a senior AHI official declined to comment on how such a programme might be structured, or whether such an initiative was imminent.
Lynch confirmed during his speech that AHI will soon be relaunching the Irish Johne’s Control Programme, and said this was “because the industry has asked us to”.
The AHI chair forecast that Hoof Health Check “will be a game-changer for animal health, welfare and performance”.
“And the Pig Health Check programme has been one of the most important developments in that sector for generations,” Lynch maintained. With regard to BVD, the AHI chair claimed that Ireland was on the threshold of eradicating the disease.
He said the number of persistently infected animals had dropped to “a tiny fraction of where we started” and that the programme was delivering annual benefits to the economy of around €183m.
SHARING OPTIONS