The North's Minister for Agriculture made it clear she was not pleased this week by comments from IFA President Mr Tom Parlon, who criticised the four-day delay in culling cattle suspected of carrying foot-and-mouth disease in Ardboe, Co Tyrone.
A preliminary negative result on samples from the animals was overturned and confirmed positive last Friday, the first time this has occurred in 1,300 cases of the virus. The pedigree herd on the Donnelly farm was slaughtered last Saturday and burnt on pyres over recent days.
"If you contrast it with the way the Irish Department deals with a suspect case. They move in; if they're sufficiently concerned they slaughter out immediately. They take their samples and the samples are sent at that stage to Pirbright. If they come back negative in two days' time they say, `So what?' - it was important to take the infection out," said Mr Parlon.
The South had already made a huge sacrifice with the culling of 54,000 animals on the Cooley peninsula. "I certainly got a lot of phone calls over the weekend saying why have we sacrificed here if the North are not taking it serious," he added.
Speaking on UTV, Mrs Brid Rodgers said she was "shocked" at the criticism. "I think Mr Parlon - if that's his name - should recognise that we culled 9,000 healthy animals in south Armagh as part of a joint effort with the South and it was a precautionary cull.
"We have not been tardy - and had we culled out a pedigree herd I have no doubt whatsoever that the first person in to criticise us would be a farming leader who would say `you culled a pedigree herd for nothing'," she said. Mr Parlon said yesterday he had no wish to criticise the North's administration but his comments reflected the views of farmers in the South who blamed the two new cases in Northern Ireland last weekend for continuing restrictions on movement. It was important to have the "same regime" North and South and he welcomed the policy change that appeared to have occurred in the North's handling of its most recent suspect cases in Co Tyrone and Co Antrim, where pre-emptive culling had occurred.
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture in Dublin yesterday said the Government's policy was to cull animals if they could not be properly identified; if they were suspected of being moved illegally; stray, or having had contact with animals in the North. If the health of animals was "sufficiently worrying" a cull would be ordered in a suspect case. Mr Micheal McCoy of the Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers' Association, admitted yesterday he was "very nervous" that certain suspect flocks had yet to be eradicated in precautionary culls in the North. "My own policy would be if in doubt take it out," he said.
Mr Francie Molloy of Sinn Fein, a member of the Stormont agriculture committee, yesterday said he believed the culling policy in the North should be more aggressive. Mr Ian Paisley jnr of the DUP, also a member of the committee, said he believed a certain amount of confusion would persist in the North's handling of the crisis until the source of the two most recent outbreaks were ascertained. He claimed the two policies divided into the South's determination to "cull on suspicion" against the North's "cull on confirmation".
However, a spokesman for the North's department of Agriculture said this was not the case and risk assessment and the advice of vets on the ground dictated whether a cull took place. As in the South, this did not occur in all suspect cases. "The policies are broadly in line but we are more measured." Almost 20,000 animals have been killed in the North to date, with extensive culls continuing in Co Antrim last night.
Another source at the Department strongly dismissed claims that the North was adopting a lax approach. "We're two separate jurisdictions, we don't have a common culling policy. We haven't agreed it at a North-South Ministerial Council meeting."
Mr Joe McDonald of the Ulster Farmers' Union yesterday said the situation on the Ardboe case should be seen in the context that the North had gone six weeks without another confirmed outbreak since Meigh.