The Department of Agriculture must “up its game” on explaining and communicating the TB animal movement restrictions which were introduced earlier this year, a leading mart manager has claimed.
“The marts are being asked to deliver an advisory service for farmers on the rules, and that’s not good enough. That’s not our job,” said Eimear McGuinness of Donegal Mart.
“The Department needs to up their game on this,” she maintained.
McGuinness said that rather than relying on the marts to advise farmers what they needed to do in particular cases, the Department needed to hold a series of farmer information meetings to tease out the issues.
Cow prices have fallen back in line with cattle prices since the start of the year, with some marts indicating that this price drop, which is in the order of €100-150/head, has been exacerbated by the TB movement restrictions. Michael Harty of Central Auctions claimed that around three-quarters of the cows going through the rings are within test and open for farmer and feedlot buyers.
However, he said the problem was with the 25% of cows that were out of test and therefore bidding was restricted to feedlot buyers. Whether a cow was tested or not was impacting cow prices, particularly in the case of store cows, Harty said.
“It’s a big advantage to have store cows tested,” he maintained.
Meanwhile, Seán Leahy of Corrin Mart said the new rules have caused very little disruption to cow sales in dairy areas and he insisted that prices are holding stronger than those of heavy cattle.
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