Back to normal?

By Andrew Bushe

DUBLIN — As a major preemptive cull of healthy livestock is set to leave County Louth’s Cooley Peninsula virtually empty of animals this week, agriculture ministers from north and south of the border are planning an island-wide approach to deal with smugglers and future disease outbreaks.

The Republic’s minister, Joe Walsh, and Northern Ireland’s, Brid Rodgers, decided on the new joint strategy when they met Friday in Dublin under the auspices of the North-South Ministerial Council, set up as part of the peace process.

Both North and South each have had only one outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. It is the first time for 60 years that the virus has spread to the island.

"We have asked our officials to bring forward plans so that we can assure that what has happened in the last few weeks and the threat to our whole agricultural industry is minimized and can never happen again," Rodgers said.

The council will meet again in June to review progress in drawing up a prevention, containment and eradication strategy.

The Cooley cull has involved more than 48,000 sheep, 800 cattle, almost 600 pigs, 229 goats and 277 deer.

It has still not been established exactly how the disease spread across the border from Armagh into Louth last month, but the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said both virus outbreaks had resulted from the same flock of illegally imported sheep from Britain.

He strongly attacked livestock smugglers. "They have a culture that they seem to think that this is their God-given right,": he said. "Of course they are bully-boys as well as criminals who seem to be able to use force and terrorize people from being able to speak."

Ahern said the smugglers were also connected with terrorist organizations operating on the border. "We will have to take far tougher action on this," he said.

Since the foot-and-mouth crisis started, the Oireachtas has introduced emergency legislation to deal with rogue traders. Details of a new national system of sheep tagging to help trace their origins was announced on April 2.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the smuggling was so bad in the past that farmers had threatened to burn foreign-registered trucks being used for smuggling.

The documents released to the Irish Times reveal the Irish Farmers Association complained in 1998 that 20,000 lambs a week were being irregularly imported at that time.

An agricultural ministry memo said farmers were furious about the lack of concern shown by the authorities.

The IFA warned there was an element (of sheep producers) that were "out of control."

The group was discussing "the next step of burning trucks with non-Irish registration, which were delivering to meat plants," the official’s memo states.

Farmers were concerned "in the context of the integrity of exports and for commercial and health reasons."

The documents show agriculture officials asked the revenue authorities to investigate tax evasion and "very large sums" were involved in subsequent VAT settlements by meat plants.

With all tests on suspect animals now clear, Walsh announced an easing of some of the foot-and-mouth restrictions on a phased basis.

This involves controlled resumption of horse racing, artificial insemination, livestock marts as assembly points for animals for slaughter, transportation of fodder and the importation of horses from countries not affected by the virus.

Walsh said horse racing can resume on a limited basis beginning April 16 and the normal can resume April 19, providing there are no new problems in the meantime. Point-to-point racing is not permitted.

An expert group is examining protocols to allow the resumption of greyhound racing.

The minister warned, however, that "national solidarity" must continue to ensure no more cases of the disease occur.

"The battle is not yet over and I am again asking the people of Ireland to maintain their vigilance and to ensure that precautions are neither relaxed nor ignored," Walsh said.

The minister said it was crucially important to reach April 19 — 30 days after the Cooley case was discovered — without another outbreak so that some EU restrictions could be lifted.

"It would be so detrimental to all the efforts if we got complacent and there was some little bit of carelessness somewhere," he said. "I am saying to people: ‘You’re almost to the line. Don’t lose concentration.’ "