THE Irish Veterinary Union has challenged the Irish Farmers' Association to ballot its members to determine if they are in favour of the new privatised bovine TB eradication scheme.
IVU general secretary Mr Pat Brady claimed last night there was growing evidence that farmers did not want the new scheme introduced and had serious problems with ending the pre movement disease testing.
He was basing his belief on a series of public meetings in different parts of the country over recent weeks where farmers voiced their opposition to the scheme, due to be implemented on April 1st.
Mr Brady said that at a meeting in Navan, Co Meath, last week, only nine of the almost 400 farmers present had voted for the proposed scheme.
Mr Brady attacked the IFA leadership for failing to reflect the views of its members. The IFA had come out in support of the new scheme.
"It is quite clear that the expert scientific opinion of vets on the scheme is taken seriously and shared by the overwhelming majority of farmers who are deeply concerned about the long term market for their products should disease levels increase," he added
Mr Brady added that the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, had promised farmers a bonanza by reducing farm levies, but this had now been exposed as nothing more than a chimera.
"The autocratic approach apparently favoured by the Minister and some of his supporters in the leadership of the IFA now represents a very serious threat to Irish farmers," he said.
However, the IFA president, Mr John Donnelly attacked what he termed "the irresponsible scare tactics of the IVU" and said they were deliberately misleading farmers on the facts over the new scheme.
The IVU, he said, had blocked every attempt in the past 20 years to improve the eradication scheme. The irresponsible actions of the IVU had cost millions of pounds of EU funding since 1991.
"After all the failures of the TB scheme it is an indictment of the leadership of the veterinary profession that they are continuing at this stage to actively try and stop the new TB scheme," he said.
Mr Donnelly asked why the vets feared privatisation in a scheme which would have them negotiate directly with farmers for their fees.
"Are they afraid of competition where young vets will now have the right to test cattle herds without having to pay back 30 per cent of their testing fees to the testing barons," asked Mr Donnelly.