Since taking up post as Chair of the Agriculture, Environment & Rural Affairs (AERA) Committee, I have been inundated with messages and calls from Farmers about two issues in particular. The one that has grabbed most headlines over the past two weeks has obviously been the Labour Government raid on Farms through the Agriculture Property Relief and the second issue, one that presents a more imminent threat to Farm sustainability and Farmer welfare, is Bovine TB (bTB).

Today, Minister Muir and Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) Brian Dooher presented to us at Committee on the CVO Review of bTB in Northern Ireland. I took the chance to make the case for those who are being most impacted by this issue and stated that further inaction or more “paralysis by analysis” by the Minister and the Department is the single biggest threat faced by Farmers at this moment. The Minister has reassured us that, the soon-to-be-formed bTB partnership, will deliver its action plan and recommendations by the end of March 2025 however I made the point that any more “pencil ploughing” mustn’t stop an agreed regional response to fundamentally eradicate bTB.

The review by the CVO doesn’t bring much news to the table. However, upon initial reading, the case is clearly made that we need to move at pace to the intervention stage. Obtaining multi-stakeholder agreement, whilst inarguably difficult, is achievable and by taking a regional approach and constantly adjusting for better solutions we can give hope to our beleaguered Farming families and perhaps we will all see the path to disease freedom.