The cost of purchasing an illegally-imported calf from the North has more than doubled in the past few weeks, reports Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent.
Cross-Border calf smuggling has been disrupted because of the lifting of the EU ban on cattle exports from the UK, which will come into operation next month, The Irish Times has learned.
For the last decade, hundreds of farmers in the Republic have illegally purchased calves from Northern dairy herds for between €20 and €30, including delivery. The EU ban was imposed on the UK because of BSE in 1996.
However, now farmers in the North, who had been selling bull calves for less than €10 each and offering "three for the price of one" earlier in the year, are reluctant to part with them in the hope that a veal trade will develop from the UK.
Last weekend smugglers in the North were quoting the price of delivered smuggled calves to the Republic at £50 sterling (€72) per head, more than twice the going rate prior to the announcement of the end of the ban three weeks ago. In the past decade a bustling veal-calf trade has grown up between the Republic and the continent.
Some of the calves have been illegally imported from the North using smuggling routes. This trade was driven by the low price of calves in Ireland. Even bull calves of dairy breeds, which are impossible to fatten into beef cattle, have been making prices of up to €200 for the lucrative veal trade.
Since the beginning of the year, calf exports to the continent from the State have increased by 109.8 per cent to 14,865.
The trade for older calves has grown by 115 per cent to 11,240, according to Bord Bia figures.
While Department of Agriculture investigators have been vigilant, the cross-Border trade in illegally-imported animals has continued as purchasers of illegal calves attempted to remain ahead of investigators.
Following the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, when very strict movement controls were introduced and the registration of all animals on computer became mandatory, the illegal cross-Border trade was badly dented and almost ceased.
When farm-by-farm investigations began, hundreds of illegally-imported animals were let loose on public roads or killed on farms as the department cracked down and demanded evidence of maternity.
Later the department began to investigate the "twinning" rate on Irish farms, which was then the highest in the world, as illegal importers started to register their smuggled calves as twins or triplets to existing stock.
The department countered this by introducing DNA testing of cows and their supposed progeny. The Irish cattle twinning rate fell dramatically and a number of successful prosecutions were taken against smugglers.
However, the trade revived in the last 18 months when smugglers began to register illegally-imported calves to cows which had already been slaughtered. DNA could not be obtained from cows slaughtered or rendered.
The illegally-imported calves were also being registered to infertile cows that had never had a calf or to cows that had lost calves; the smuggled replacements were readily available on the black market.
Department investigators are now looking at the possibility of shortening the time farmers will be given to register calves, and also the deaths of cows on farms or at slaughter plants.
They are also paying attention to cow and calf mortality and slaughter rates in the Border counties and calf registration levels which The Irish Times has been told are out of line with the rest of the State.
Last weekend at calf sales in the Republic bull calves were making over €200 a head but in the North, the number of calves on offer had dropped and those buying them were paying twice as much as in the previous week.