The Irish Times Innovation Awards April 2014 | Page 28

NORTH/SOUTH COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION AWARD

Winner:
Animal Health Ireland
(AHI)

Bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV) may not feature in the
public’s lexicon of animal ailments but it costs Irish farmers
more than €100 million each year and a new programme
devised by Animal Health Ireland (AHI) is set to eradicate it
completely from the island by the end of the decade.
AHI is a not-for-profit organisation established as a private
public partnership in 2009 with the mandate to provide
leadership at national level for non-regulated diseases with
the goals of enhancing the profitability and sustainability
of individual livestock farms, enhancing the profitability of
the food processing industry and enhancing the quality,
image and competitiveness of Irish livestock and food in the
marketplace.
The idea to develop a BVDV eradication programme
came about shortly after AHI’s foundation, according to
communications manager Grainne Dwyer.
“One of our first jobs was to determine the priority issues
for farmers and the industry. We couldn’t believe it when
BVDV came out on top and that both farmers and industry
wanted to see it controlled first.” Eradication of the disease
has been identified as being very important in meeting the
country’s targets for agriculture under the Food Harvest 2020
programme.
With cross-border trade accounting for a significant
proportion of the cattle sector, this disease had to be tackled
on both sides of the border. AHI worked closley withi its sister
organisation North of the border, Animal Health and Welfare
NI (AWHNI). Programme management was shared between
the two organisations.
The disease is passed onto calves while in the womb. The
AHI programme involves a cost effective laboratory test of
the sample of skin from the calf’s ear which is produced as a
result of them being tagged. If a sample comes back positive
the farmer waits three weeks and has the animal retested to
make sure it is a PI and then takes appropriate action.
The programme was piloted on a voluntary basis in 2012 and
was proven to be successful. “We had to make sure that the
labs could cope with the demand for tests before rolling out
the compulsory programme in 2013,” Dwyer points out. “We
have had a compliance rate of more than 99 per cent and
we are already seeing a reduction in the number of PI calves
born this year. The plan is to get rid of PIs over three years
and have the disease eradicated by the end of the decade.”

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