New rules agreed at this weeks Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, SCoFCAH, will mean Member States can now ban until the end of this year, the importation from Bluetongue restricted areas of all cattle and sheep over 90 days old unless they have been vaccinated or unless natural immunity to the disease can be demonstrated.
This is a positive development with UFU members anxious to see tougher import restrictions. The potential financial impact of a Bluetongue outbreak is now becoming clearer.
Animals would be slaughtered without compensation and it could disrupt trade, for example in the dairy sector where some export markets have threatened to accept milk from Bluetongue infected farms.
The UFU has urged the Minister for Agriculture to introduce tighter restrictions at the earliest opportunity. This week UFU President Kenneth Sharkey, Animal Health Chairman Cyril Millar and IFA Deputy President Derek Deane met the Minister at Stormont to emphasise the strong feeling in both organisations that everything possible needed to be done to keep Ireland free of the disease.
Kenneth Sharkey said: "We believe these new EU rules should be interpreted to achieve the maximum effect. This would include ensuring that animals which had previously 'resided' in an infected Bluetongue region should be excluded from import".
The UFU reiterated its call on everyone in the industry to stop importing livestock for breeding or slaughter.
Meanwhile Italy has reported its first outbreak of Blue Tongue V8 and the government thinks it was imported via an infected animal rather than natural progression of the disease.