Nationally, as of 1st September 2024, on a 12-month rolling basis, herd incidence increased to 5.52% compared to 4.74% at the same time last year. In the past 12 months, 5,607 herds were restricted, compared to 4,872 in the previous 12-month period.
However, parts of the country are more significantly affected, including Lombard’s home county of Cork.
“This is a really significant issue in my part of the world. In the past six months, the tuberculosis reactor rate has increased by 22%. The current levels of tuberculosis in Cork’s bovine herds have gone through the roof. This is causing terrible stress and hardship for the families.”
“As I was walking to the Chamber, I received a phone call from a neighbour who had a TB test done on his farm today. He lost ten cows. I met another man in Timoleague who had 52 reactors found during the week. The numbers are frightening,” he told colleagues in the Seanad.
He claimed the country is experiencing an outbreak of TB that “we cannot control” and said the situation would get much worse: “because if there is TB in the bovine herd going into housing, God knows how it will react and spread through the herd when the herd is housed.
“We will see the levels of TB increase dramatically next spring, which will have a huge financial impact on family farms and the co-operative societies.
“It will cause unbelievable mental trauma for farmers to have their stock taken away to be slaughtered. Members of the veterinary community, coming into the yards of farmers they know very well, may have to put down a large percentage of their herds as reactors. That is another trauma in the system,” he said.
Lombard reiterated that the TB eradication programme, which started in the mid-1950s, has been a failure and said increased funding has not addressed the issue.
“We will never eradicate TB from Ireland, and to call it a TB eradication scheme loses focus. At best, it is a TB control scheme aimed at trying to manage the problem,” he said.
Lombard called for a debate on the situation with the Minister for Agriculture and stressed the need for adequate staff to deal with the issue.
“I have farmers who are under financial, physical, and mental pressure because of what has happened to their herds in the past few months,” he said.
This comes as the secretary general of the Department, Brendan Gleeson, told a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee in July that taxpayer spending on the TB programme would reach €80m this year, not including staff costs, up from €57m in 2022.
“I think we’re at a point now where we have to do something different,” he told the Committee, adding that €2-3m in yearly funding from the EU will cease this year.
With the incidence of the disease now at over 5% of herds, Gleeson said measures must be adopted to ensure the disease does not spread to the other 95%.
“The short answer is there’s not one single thing that can be done, but there are things that can be done, and they’ll be difficult,” he said, highlighting further restrictions on cattle movement and the use of technology such as vaccination.
“I do think there has to be a step-up in action now, and we’re working with farmers through a TB forum.
“But I can tell you, some of what emerges might be contested.
“We really have to make sure we stop this disease from spreading, and a big part of the spread is movement between animals from farm to farm,” he said.
