EXCLUSIVE £1.1m paid out in Fermanagh in just eight weeks for cattle culls

William

Smith

IN LESS than two months, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) paid out over £1.1 million in compensation for cattle that had to be culled after catching Bovine TB (BTB). The staggering figure – which was revealed in a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to the Department – shows the true cost of ongoing inaction related to the disease, which continues to wreak havoc on farmers’ livelihoods, family businesses, and mental health.

According to an FOI, in February and January this year the Department paid out a total of £1,122,690 in compensation to farmers in the Enniskillen District Veterinary Office.

Contrast this to just over five years ago from February 2019 to December 2019 around £1.9m was paid out to local farmers for TB reactors.

By 2023, compensation had more than doubled to £5,349,500. Total payouts rose by £1m each year, all while the number of reactor animals also skyrocketed.

According to DAERA, a reactor animal either has, or is highly likely to have, BTB, and as a precaution is taken off-farm and culled. In the first two months of 2019, only 294 reactor animals were found in Enniskillen.

Fast forward to the start of this year, and 473 reactors were found in the local veterinary area - a staggering increase of 67 per cent.

Indeed, the scale of the problem is perhaps best summed up in the following statistic.

In 2019, 1,538 cattle were found to be BTB, and had to be removed from farms. Last year, over 3,003 reactors were found, closing up a total of 463 herds.

In 2023, Enniskillen had some of the highest rates of BTB in Northern Ireland, with a herd incidence rate of 12.06 per cent – the second highest in NI, second only to Newtownards (12.24 per cent).

And while the most recent statistics show a slight drop in BTB incidence this year (11.36 per cent), the disease continues to cause widespread issues for farmers, with a total of 96 herds herds closed up in the first two months of this year.

But the black-and-white statistics and financial figures only tell half the story. Ask any farmer on the ground, and they tell of the truly devastating impact that BTB is ravaging on the countryside.

For any farmer, being ‘down’ with BTB is bad news. Even so much as one animal is found to have BTB, a herd is closed up, and farmers are sharply restricted when selling livestock, decimating incomes in one fell swoop.

Two clear tests must be achieved before this status is lifted, often leaving herds closed for months on end, and in some cases, years.

The official term for a herd that is down with BTB is a ‘breakdown’, and this term perhaps best describes the impact on farmers and their livelihoods (explored in detail overleaf).

Lisbellaw dairy farmer, Richard Dane, said that being forced to cull dozens of milk cows because of BTB was a “dark time” for him. Overall, he lost a total of 35 cows in the past two years due to the disease – a story that is all too common in Fermanagh.

“They were very dark times, and they aren’t over yet,” said Mr. Dane, as he recounted having to load otherwise healthy dairy cows, yielding over 10 gallons a day onto a trailer for slaughter.

“A farmer has an attachment to his cows. I remember remarking that the cows were never looking as well, a real picture.