At the Animal Health Ireland (AHI) conference in Cork yesterday (Wednesday), Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney, confirmed that the Department of Agriculture would financially support the start of a pilot voluntary Johne’s control programme in Ireland, led by the AHI. In recent weeks there has been intensive discussion among stakeholders on how and who should fund a pilot programme.

Dr Sam Strain, the AHI Johne’s Programme manager, outlined why a Johne’s control programme was necessary in Ireland, and suggested the best control measure was good management on the farm, not vaccination or eradication. The long term aim will be to protect not infected farms, facilitate control on infected farms and provide confidence to those trading product out of Ireland.

Among other speakers, the attendees heard about international practice from Elena DiLabio, Switzerland on BVD, David Kennedy, Australia on Johne’s, and Patricia Konig, Germany on IBR.

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Elena Di Labio outlined how Switzerland started a BVD eradication program in 2007 and subsequently have reduced the number of herds with BVD infected calves from 1.4% to 0.02% (one or two infected farms per month). Like Ireland, Switzerland established a calf tag tissue testing programme for three years (2008 to 2010). However, they had to complete five years of tag testing before infection levels were reduced to a low enough threshold. They are now on the cusp of eradication.

Over 300 farmers and vets attended the Cork event, to discuss the ongoing efforts of AHI to improve herd health in Ireland for BVD, IBR, somatic cell count and Johne’s disease. AHI was established five years ago and the conference was organised primarily to allow scrutiny of ongoing programmes and to hear what other countries are doing on control and monitoring.

Full report next week.