Are we spreading disease on farmland?

AS the widow of a veterinary surgeon in north Cork and east Limerick, who helped with his practice during the 1960s and ‘70s, I am well aware of the trauma within the farm family when a reactor shows up in either the TB or brucellosis annual test.

On reading that there is no improvement in the status of the national herd, and seeing that the badger population is taken as the biggest culprit, it occurred to me that there may be another source, very obvious but apparently not thought of.

As I understand it, when an animal is culled it is sent to the specified meat plant and those parts of it which cannot be used are sent to the rendering plant and disposed of.

On the understanding that the resultant solid waste is removed regularly and spread over farm land, could there be a possibility that there is reinfection not only of TB, or brucellosis, but nowadays also specified risk material (SRM)?

Whatever about the TB or brucellosis and any other pathogens in the carcass being destroyed (and I would like to be assured that they are), I am positive the SRM is not.

Could we have a debate on this?

Afra Cronin,

Hazelwood,

Ferrybank,

Waterford.