ICMSA calls on minister to include dairy stock in assistance scheme

The ICMSA has called on Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney to include dairy stock in the BVD assistance measures.

ICMSA deputy president Pat McCormack said the exclusion of dairy stock completely from the bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) assistance measure was unfair and wrong given that financial losses are being suffered by dairy farmers as well as suckler farmers.

Mr McCormack said farmers would welcome the payment of €100 per head where two or more calves from a suckler herd are found to be persistently infected.

However, he said that no one would be able to understand why a dairy farmer who finds persistently infected animals in his or her herd and whose loss is equal to, if not greater than, the loss suffered by the suckler farmer is not eligible for any BVD assistance measures.

He said that farmers over the past year have put in huge effort financially and otherwise in relation to BVD in terms of testing and, if the programme is to be successful, the removal of persistently infected animals as soon as possible is an absolute imperative.

The ICMSA is encouraging its members to remove infected animals as soon as they are identified.