THE Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers has renewed its appeal to the Government for an official import ban on all cattle, sheep and other susceptible species from all bluetongue infected countries.
The call was made in a letter to the new minister of state for farming and the environment, Jim Fitzpatrick, this week after the association became aware of Defra data confirming that hundreds of cattle are continuing to be imported from restricted countries where the bluetongue virus remains a major threat.
RABDF chairman Lyndon Edwards said: “A ban is absolutely essential if we are to help maintain the UK free of this costly disease.
“During May alone, Defra recorded over 847 cattle were imported from bluetongue restricted countries, a figure 50% higher than March and more than 20 times greater than January, not even taking into account over a thousand cattle being imported from Ireland.
“This information suggests that farmers may be starting to believe that the risk of bluetongue has reduced in some way, when in reality the warm weather we have seen in the past few weeks may amplify the potential threat.
“It takes only one infected animal to be brought onto our shores, one that has gone undetected as was the case last year, to then pass this to a midge which could potentially spread the disease to who knows how many cattle. There is no doubt that we must take action now or we could be facing a major epidemic,” he explains.
In February, Mr Edwards wrote to the then minister of state for farming and the environment, Jane Kennedy, calling for a statutory ban on imports, only to receive a response stating that to impose a statutory ban would be illegal.
Since then, the RABDF has encouraged farmers to impose their own, voluntary ban to prevent the risk of infected cattle introducing the disease to the UK.
“We have written to the new minister, Jim Fitzpatrick, explaining the potential issues at stake, highlighting the number of animals being imported and calling for urgent Government action. We simply cannot continue to ignore this import trend. Fellow member states waste no time at all in putting their national herd disease security before the rules of free trade and it is time the UK did the same.
“In the meantime, we cannot stress how important it is for farmers to stop importing cattle, particularly during this vector period. We trust that other farming organisations will step forward and reiterate our stance to their members.”
He added: “Genetic improvement of herds and flocks can still be achieved through means other than the importation of live animals and we hope that we shall see a decline in the number of imports in the next month in order to safeguard our livestock.”
