TB reactor numbers continue to rise amid calls for ‘reset of policy’

There were 31,756 reactors in the country between June 2023 and June 2024, up from 25,287 in the previous 12 months.

During the same time, there has been a 10pc increase in the number of herds restricted, up to 5,215 in the 12 months to June 2024.

The figures, which were presented at a recent meeting of the TB forum, show that the five-year herd incidence rate has increased from 3.72 in 2019 to 4.94 in 2023.

The increase in TB levels over the last number of years, and especially the last 12 months, is of huge concern to farmers, and the outcome of the TB round test has now become a hugely stressful time for all farmers and, in particular, those who end up restricted for long periods, according to Eamon Carroll, deputy president of ICMSA.

He said a TB restriction is hugely stressful from a human, farm-management and financial perspective, especially for farmers who are forced to carry additional livestock over an extended timeframe and in particular in the spring period.

​“Farmers across the country are asking the question: we are spending millions on TB, are subject to more and more regulation on TB, and the reactor and herd incidence figures are going in the wrong direction — why?”

Mr Carroll said at this stage there needs to be a full reset on TB policy, a root and branch review, in order to deliver clear policies that will address TB levels and, critically, treat the farmers restricted with TB with greater fairness and understanding on the very difficult position that they find themselves in.

A senior Department of Agriculture official recently told a Teagasc podcast that Ireland might be about to turn a corner in the long-running battle to eradicate bovine TB.

The comments come in the wake of the publication of a recent Department of Agriculture research paper, in the Farming Independent, which found that most vets don’t believe TB can be eradicated by 2030, if at all.

With some 5pc of herds now locked up with TB, David Quinn, superintending veterinary inspector at the Department of Agriculture, conceded that the statistics in relation to the disease are “going in the wrong way at the moment”, but he said he was “optimistic that maybe we might be about to turn a corner on it”.

“I suppose the other way to look at it is that 95pc of the herds are not locked up and that is a positive thing,” he said, adding that the TB test and the eradication programme is something Ireland has to have in place.