Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader and Agriculture Spokesperson Diana Armstrong MLA has urged farmers to respond to DAERA’s consultation on wildlife intervention options to tackle bovine TB before it closes at 5pm on Friday 9^th October.

Diana Armstrong said:

“Bovine TB is one of the most damaging problems facing Northern Ireland agriculture. It costs more than £150 million a year, with almost £100 million of that falling directly on farmers, and around half of that carried by herds that have never had a breakdown at all. Behind every one of those figures is a family watching years of breeding work leave the yard.

“We have been talking about this for decades. Farmers have endured testing, restrictions and heartbreak while the disease has gone on spreading. This consultation is the first real opportunity in years to shape what happens next, and I would urge every herd owner to take it.

“Do not assume someone else will speak for you. Departments count responses. A consultation that attracts a thin response gives whoever comes next an excuse to do nothing, and doing nothing is what has brought us to where we are.

“I have concerns about how this has been handled. The Department had to extend its own deadline because a scientific report referenced in its consultation documents had not been published. A twelve week consultation on a question this serious should not have run with part of its own evidence base missing, and farmers who responded before that report appeared are entitled to feel short changed.

“That makes it more important, not less, that farmers now have their say. The deadline is 5pm on Friday 9th October and the documents are on the DAERA website.

“What farmers need above all is a decision. This consultation must not join the long list of reviews, strategies and blueprints that gather dust while the disease spreads and the bill grows. Whatever the Minister concludes, he needs to conclude it, and farmers deserve to know whether he intends to act on this himself or leave it to whoever follows him.”