Garda smelled cruelty from road

A RURAL garda literally smelled animal cruelty as he passed a farm in North Cork and on investigation he found 47 dead cattle and many more malnourished cows standing among the carcases.

“I got a stench, a strange odour, and I went to the farmyard. I met the farmer, Finbarr O’Reilly, and asked him could he smell anything and he said, ‘no’. I asked him were there any dead animals on the farm and he said, ‘one or two’,” Garda John O’Neill of Rathduff Garda Station said at Cork District Court yesterday.

He was giving evidence in the case where Finbarr O’Reilly, aged 35, of Newgrove, Whitechurch, Co Cork, pleaded guilty to six charges arising out of what was found at his farm on June 18. He admitted two counts of animal cruelty, two counts of failing to dispose of carcases and two breaches of BSE regulations by failing to dispose of specific risk material in carcases.