Support group for farmers with BSE in herds started

Farmers in whose herds cases of BSE have been found met in Tullamore yesterday to set up a support group.

Farmers in whose herds cases of BSE have been found met in Tullamore yesterday to set up a support group.

While most of the 120 or so people gathered in the Tullamore Court Hotel were angry about the levels of compensation offered to them, their sense of isolation and hurt was palpable.

Speaker after speaker said the first thing they had been told when they reported the disease was to say nothing about it, not even to friends or neighbours.

Mr John Drew, from Co Clare, said that being told your herd had BSE was bad enough, without being unable to share it with friends.

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He outlined his long struggle with the Department of Agriculture to get proper compensation for the remaining cattle on the farm, which although healthy, are killed under a slaughter-out policy.

The audience shouted agreement when he went through the steps he had taken to prevent his herd being taken away for slaughter. At one stage he used the wheels of his tractor to block lorries which had arrived for his herd.

Another farmer, Ms Marie Kennedy from Cork, told how she was waiting to have the family herd of 318 animals slaughtered. Many of the high-pedigree cows, she said, were pregnant.

"They are going to cut the throats of 100 cows, many in calf and those calves will smother to death.

"I think that there has to be another answer to the slaughter scheme," she said in a breaking voice.

The farmers were invited to the meeting by Mary and John Breen, who were among the first to go public on the disease, and the Irish Farmers' Journal. The farmers questioned the assertion that BSE was caused by infected meat and bonemeal.

One woman, who did not identify herself, said they had lost their herd to the disease and had never fed meat and bonemeal and had reared all their own animals on the farm.

They agreed to draw up a list of companies from which they had purchased food for their animals in an effort to find out if there was a common link. Ms Eileen O'Reilly from Cavan said most of the people she had spoken to had lost a lot of money from low valuations of animals and lack of real compensation for the loss of milk, which they were not allowed supply during the depopulation process.

"The compensation system stinks in a country which is coming down with money," she said.

Another farmer told the meeting that every one of them in the room had done the honourable thing and reported their cases of BSE.

"We came out with our hands in the air and they kicked us in the behind," he said.

Westmeath farmer Mr Frank Butler said he had lost heavily in the time between slaughter of the herd and buying in cattle again, as the price of replacement animals had gone up.

"However, it has killed the whole farming idea in the family. My 16-year-old daughter, who used to help me, will not come out on the farm any more with me," he said.

There was a lot of criticism of the Irish Farmers' Association for its failure to support the victims in their search for decent compensation and deputy president of the IFA, Mr John Dillon, accepted that not enough had been done.