National BVD eradication programme
The programme began with a voluntary year on 1st January 2012 and uptake and progress to date have been encouraging. Despite the inconvenience and additional costs of using a third button tag (as opposed to a tissue sample enabled official identification tag) for the collection of samples, over 534,000 tags have already been ordered. This represents approximately 25% of the annual national calf crop with participating herds split approximately 60:40 between dairy and beef.
The voluntary period has provided an opportunity to road test many different aspects of the programme, and it has been encouraging to see processor groups putting in place arrangements with designated laboratories to obtain competitive prices and a streamlined procedure for submission and payment. The testing laboratories have performed well, dealing comfortably with a throughput which at the peak of spring calving exceeded 35,000 samples per week, achieving an average turnaround time from receipt in the lab to reporting of less than 5 days.
