And the UFU urged other industry organisations to take the same approach and refuse to co-operate with the cost-sharing consultation.
Outlining the UFU's opposition to DARD's proposals, Union president, Graham Furey, said: "DARD have given us a commitment to reduce the cost and burden of bureaucracy in the industry by 25 per cent. Now they are proposing to heap costs back onto producers by another means. The timing of this consultation could not be worse; TB remains unresolved, the industry is already struggling with unprecedented rises in costs and it is premature for DARD to propose a cost sharing model before the European Union Community Animal Health Plan emerges. This process should be about making animal health policy and delivery more efficient, but instead it seems Government simply wants to use it as a thinly-veiled attempt to transfer costs onto farmers so that Comprehensive Spending Review targets can be met.''
The UFU said that some of the proposals put forward in DARD's consultation would immediately put additional costs onto farm businesses. For example, DARD proposes transferring to farmers the cost of collection and disposal of over 24 month cattle which die on-farm and which must be BSE tested as part of EU obligations, and the cost of BSE testing cattle for human consumption. Graham Furey said this alone would cost the industry an extra £3.6 million annually.
"Animal health is already a massive financial burden on farmers,'' Graham Furey pointed out. "There are significant costs associated with herd testing and many other costs exist such as meat inspection charges, offal charges and BSE sampling costs.
"Farmers are conducting almost 2.5 million animal tests each year for TB but the disease is more prevalent now than ten years ago. There will be no prospect of progress unless the TB problem is resolved.''
Highlighting farmers anger about a lack of progress on TB, Graham Furey added: "We participated for four years in a TB and wildlife working group established by DARD but no progress was made and TB continues to plague many local farm businesses. TB is an example of how current Government animal health policy is not working and how we could not sign up to cost sharing when the measures we would be helping to pay for are clearly not working.''
Graham Furey said that Animal Health was a priority issue for the Northern Ireland farming sector.
"We need to achieve the highest possible animal health status to protect our trade position in a very competitive global market place. Government should be focusing on investing in effective and efficient animal health measures rather than focusing on transferring costs to producers,'' he said.