Paula Hynes: We need to learn from the Bluetongue outbreak
Zandra with her newborn Angus bull calf. Picture: Paula Hynes
The hope for us, and indeed the entire UK livestock industry earlier this year, would have been that Bluetongue restrictions in the UK would be lifted this autumn or, at the very least, they would apply for regionalisation, where livestock from non-high-risk areas could be exported to the island of Ireland, including Northern Ireland.
For those of you who don’t know what the signs of the Bluetongue virus are in bovines, sheep and other ruminants, it can cause sudden severe drop in milk, abortion, redness around the eyes, mouth and at the top of the hooves, loss of appetite, and nasal discharge.
