Questions have been raised over how strictly vets are adhering to the Department’s policy on certifying the correct identities of cattle after a TB test. This follows an admission by a senior veterinary inspector within the Department that some vets have not been observing best practice when certifying the identities of bovines.

Department policy states that where an animal has no identity tags on the day of a TB and/or brucellosis test, the vet must insert a temporary identity tag in the animal’s ear for testing purposes. Once the farmer has sent away for the permanent tags and placed them in the animal, the farmer “must” sign a form to confirm that the permanent tags and temporary tag are in the same animal.

The “testing veterinary practitioner must” then sign the same form to the effect that he or she is satisfied that the tags are in the same animal and can certify that the correlation is correct. “This will ordinarily require re-visiting the herd to check the animal(s) involved,” the Department wrote in a statement to the Irish Farmers Journal.

It has not been standard practice in all cases for an officer to routinely visit farms to confirm the correlation of temporary tag numbers with replacement ID tags

According to the Department, only then can the TB and/or brucellosis test be certified. After this procedure is complete, the TB and/or brucellosis test results can be recorded on to the AHCS. This policy has been in place since 2000.

It is estimated that approximately 1,500 animals are issued with temporary tags each year.

However, a Department vet has told the Irish Farmers Journal that the first time he was asked to sign a form to certify that both types of tags were in the same animal was in 2014, despite having TB-tested many animals with temporary tags since 2000.

In January 2014 this vet sent an email to a senior veterinary inspector in the Department of Agriculture, alleging that test details were regularly being uploaded on to the AHCS without forms being signed and without vets revisiting farms to correlate the tags.

In his reply to the vet, the inspector did not comment on the allegation regarding the signing of the forms. But he did say: “It has not been standard practice in all cases for an officer to routinely visit farms to confirm the correlation of temporary tag numbers with replacement ID tags. The tagging and identification of bovines has been the responsibility of the keeper since 1996 when plastic ID tags were first introduced.”

The inspector did not add whether any other type of correlation was taking place in cases where vets were not going back out to the farm to check the two types of tags.

No comment

The Department declined to comment on the vet’s allegations or on the content of the inspector’s email, saying the vet who is making the complaint is currently in litigation with the Department. “As a consequence, it would be inappropriate for the Department to comment further on this issue.”

Citing the ongoing litigation, the Department also declined to clarify the meaning of the word “ordinarily” as included in the above protocol, or to explain how a vet could in some cases certify that temporary and permanent tags are in the same animal without revisiting the farm. We also requested a comment from the Veterinary Council of Ireland, as the vet had previously raised his concerns over lack of correlation both in 2007 and 2013 with this body. However, the council, too, declined to comment, to “ensure the integrity of the council’s investigative function”.

Consequences

While there may be several ways of correlating tags, Department policy suggests that best practice involves revisiting the farm to do so.

The admission that some vets have not been going back out to the farm to physically check the animals involved raises concerns that a number of TB test results on the AHCS might have been attributed to the wrong animal, thus compromising the accuracy of TB test results on the Department’s animal health database.

Department policy also states that an animal’s temporary and permanent tags should be recorded on the AHCS. However, the Irish Farmers Journal has seen evidence of a permanent tag being attributed to an animal on the AHCS without any indication the animal previously had a temporary tag, and of temporary tags being attributed to animals as their permanent identities. Such recording on the AHCS makes it harder to spot a potentially stolen animal, as theft is a possible reason why the animal had no tags to begin with.

Transparency in this regard is especially important given the recent spike in cattle rustling in Ireland. In 2015 alone, there were 204 cattle thefts reported, a rise of 58 thefts on 2014.

Purpose

According to a policy document circulated to senior veterinary inspectors at each district veterinary office (DVO) in 2008, the purpose of the Department’s policy on the correlation of tags is to “standardise the manner” in which DVOs correlate temporary tags with the animals’ permanent identities.

However, despite the purpose of the policy, it seems there is variance with regard to how it is enforced.

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