‘A responsibility to do the right thing’
The cost of bovine TB – both psychologically and financially – is enormous. In 2024, close to €101m was spent on the disease, a rise of 35 per cent on the previous year. The herd incidence stands at just over 6 per cent and that, too, is expected to rise. There is consensus that a new approach is required – a ‘reset’ the DAFM calls it.
A series of proposals put forward by the DAFM at a recent meeting of the TB Forum on how to get a handle on the multi-factorial disease attracted criticism from farming organisations. The proposals were not published by the DAFM but were reported in the media. The ICMSA’s deputy president, Eamon Carroll, said they seemed to involve imposing 'a raft of new burdens, costs and obligations on farmers, the only group actually taking the financial and psychological hit from the surge in bTB.
When discussing this topic with Brendan Gleeson, he acknowledged the impact on farmers – something he has previously said keeps him awake at night. “I'm thinking of the impact this has on real people and farm families all around the country. It's devastating. And I think we have a responsibility to do the right thing here, even if it's hard.”
The specifics of the TB Forum meeting, which took place at the end of March, were not up for discussion with the secretary general as it is an evolving process, but he was open about what needs to happen. “We have a herd incidence of 6.2 per cent and that has gone up really significantly over the last two years. We are spending €100m in taxpayers’ money and the disease incidence is going in the wrong direction. Farmers are suffering and we are engaged in a programme that isn’t doing what we need it to do. It needs a re-set.
“ We have to work with farm bodies. That means trying to develop a programme that works and that they find workable, but there's no point in putting €100m into measures that we know aren't doing the job.”
Brendan would not be drawn on whether the DAFM will push for mandatory TB-risk disclosure, but did say: “We really need to think about the movement of high-risk animals, where they can go, and what information people have. But we also have to protect the enterprises that are suffering from this disease and make sure there's a balanced approach that identifies risk, mitigates it, but allows people to go about their business as well.” He said that this might include pre-movement testing, and he repeated that people purchasing animals should have the information they need to mitigate their own risk.
From a biosecurity standpoint, something as simple as fencing off a badger sett is very effective, he said, but this is not happening as much as you might think. “What we're talking about is one strand of electric fence around badger setts to keep the cattle away from the badger setts, not the other way around,” he said.
“We know that that's a really, really effective biosecurity measure. Not enough people are doing it. And perhaps that's a failure of communication by the department or farm bodies.”
Relapse herd and blood testing
This term, ‘relapse herd’, referred to by the DAFM in its proposals to the TB Forum relates to high-risk cases that are repeated. Brendan explained: "Relapse herds are herds with three or more skin reactors (H breakdown) when the herd has already had a H breakdown (three or more standard skin reactors) and the reactors at this subsequent breakdown were cohorts of the original reactors in the previous breakdown." Implications for farmers include being burdened repeatedly with TB restrictions. “So, we have to find ways of getting these animals off the farm,” he said.
He added: “The reality is that the TB test is just like any other diagnostic test. It detects around 80 per cent of positives. Some are left behind. One of the things we're looking at now is going back in with a blood test, which is more sensitive but not as specific. The difficulty with using the blood test in a general way is that you can find lots of false positives. But if you have a high-risk card and you do the skin test, then go back in with the blood test, then you can try to root out the infection [in a targeted way]."
Research and vaccination
He highlighted vaccination as an area of ongoing research – mainly being spearheaded by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in the UK – but acknowledged that an effective vaccine has yet to be developed: “One of the challenges is that there's a difficulty in distinguishing between a vaccinated animal and an animal that's positive,” he said. And, while vaccines are not a panacea, there is hope that they could be used in chronic cases, or where there are very high incidences, he said. However, the consequence of vaccine use on our export trade would need to be resolved – the issue being that the vaccine would cause animals to fail the traditional tuberculin skin test. Mr Gleeson added: “Even if we crack those kinds of technical issues, it's probably more likely to be used in a very targeted way than as a national vaccination policy.”
Additional disease risk
Confirmation of foot and mouth disease in Germany at the start of the year, and later in Hungary and Slovakia, has raked up bad memories of when that disease struck Irish farms in 2001. All eyes are on this developing situation, Brendan said. “At EU level, we have a veterinary committee that's keeping a very close eye on that. We haven't imported any susceptible animals from any of those places in the last 12 months. We're making sure that where machinery, for example, is coming in from the EU, that it's been cleaned and disinfected in accordance with the rules. We've gotten messages out to farmers, and out to contractors and veterinary offices about the need for heightened vigilance, and we have a detector dog operating at Dublin Airport.”
Bluetongue, too, is also on the radar: “We are not allowing any susceptible animals to be imported into Ireland. Again, we have heightened surveillance at our ports and airports. We're doing lots of surveillance around the country in the midge population to see if it is circulating.”
Due to the heightened risk of avian influenza, a compulsory housing order was introduced in February this year for poultry and captive birds. This has recently been lifted (the order is revoked from May 10) as the risk of avian influenza is no longer as high as it had been in recent months, according to the DAFM. But poultry biosecurity regulations introduced in December 2024 remain in force.
Tariffs and different perspectives
Our interview took place during the 90-day pause on additional US trade tariffs and after a trip to the US by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon and other DAFM officials, as well as representatives from Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland. While there, the minister held a series of meetings with senior US political representatives, including Brooke Rollins, secretary of the US Department of Agriculture.
“ We spent two days on the Hill really trying to just give some key messages about the mutual benefit of the trading arrangements that exist,” said Brendan. And, he said some different perspectives were shared about barriers to trade. “The US points to the non-tariff barriers to trade [as hindering their ability to export]; whereas we regard them as being public health rules or food safety rules.
“But there are also non-tariff barriers to trade going into the US that we've been unhappy about for many years. To send product to the US, we have to meet US specifications, which are different to European Union specifications. And we do have to do a fair bit of twisting ourselves inside out to meet those specifications,” he said.
“So that's the kind of perspective we shared, that if you export anywhere, you have to meet the standards in the places where the exports are going. But the critical message was about the 200,000 jobs in the US that are provided by Irish companies: these are companies that buy US raw materials; and they contribute significantly to the US economy."
Mr Gleeson noted: “If the conversation is only about the balance of trade, it is incomplete, it is also about investment and services. That was the message we tried to convey and I think it is important that we did that, and I am not sure that the people we spoke to were entirely acquainted with some of those facts.”
He said the US is viewing this through a particular lens that has little to do with Ireland’s promotion of its agri-food or the quality of its exports; this is about trade surplus and trade deficit. “President Trump says of himself, he is a negotiator and transactional. So if you are to persuade him to change his take on this, you have to present him with the benefits of the current arrangements and why it is good for the US and good for us.”
But is this a nudge for Ireland to up its export-market game? “We have had a remarkable record of success in diversifying the markets for our food products. So right now, about a third of our exports go to the UK, about a third go into the EU, and about a third go all over the world.” The biggest threat to our agri-food sector, he said, is a fragmentation of the EU Single Market. “The Single Market is more important than the Common Agricultural Policy,” he said.
He added that a lot of work has been done to develop relations with other countries to open up new markets. “ We continued to build and develop relations in the UK all through the tensions of Brexit. We never let up. We have trade missions every year. So already this year, we’ve been to Vietnam and Thailand. We are going to Japan and Korea in June. And I think we may be going to China in the autumn. But we've really worked hard on developing relations and with political systems in those countries with the technical people who are working on certification.”
90 days, then what?
Brendan said the 10 per cent tariff seems to be the baseline now, and what happens after the 90-day pause is subject to the outcome of negotiations that are focused on facts. He added: “In the US's assessment of the tariffs being charged into the European Union, they've included VAT. VAT is a sales tax. It's charged to European citizens and European farmers in exactly the same way as it's charged to imports. It's non-discriminatory. It's not a trade barrier. But they haven't presented it like that.
“One of the important things about getting around the table in any negotiation is that you're trying to agree on the facts. You might have a different policy perspective but let's just agree that these are the facts, and let’s have a discussion about that.”
Part two of this interview will feature in the June issue.