EU committee on livestock health visit

THE European Parliament’s Petitions Committee will visit west Limerick today to investigate the region’s 20 years of farm livestock health problems.

Marcin Libicki, chairman of the Petitions Committee, will be accompanied by committee vice-president and Cork MEP, Kathy Sinnott.

A multi-agency investigation over several years co-ordinated by the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that pollution, toxic substances in the diet, or soil and herbage composition anomalies, were unlikely causes of animal health problems in west Limerick. It was concluded many of the problems reported were of a type commonly seen on farms elsewhere, and there was evidence of on-farm infectious, nutritional and management factors.