The war of words around TB between farm organisations and the minister continued this week. The minister talked on Tuesday of the increased cost of stock compensation and his attempt, with the new proposals, to close off all “gaps”. I picked up the phone to my friend in Cork that has been battling TB in his herd for the last two years.

Ten more cows were recently identified as reactors following a skin test reinforced with blood testing. Once confirmed as reactors, instead of immediate removal, they were left on his farm for three weeks before collection. Where are we going bringing in new rules if we can’t, or are not implementing the current protocol? Not alone that, but he said it is impossible for a farmer to help the experts because there is little or no communication explaining results to farmers at any stage – blood, skin or factory analysis. He went on to say there seems to be different ground rules implemented on every infected farm and there is no consistency with wildlife management.

If we don’t have consistency of implementation currently, then more money and more testing isn’t going to fix the problem. Proposed new labelling rules are scaring the life out of farmers for fear they will be tarred a “TB herd” for the rest of their days. Herd asset value will crash and the root cause may in a large part be due to mismanagement and the lack of critical testing like increased DNA information. It’s hard to have confidence in new proposals knowing what’s happening on farms.