It has been brought to my attention that there are allegedly plans afoot to bring in a compulsory contribution, when a farmer buys tags, to increase funding to the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and that is being organised by the Department of Agriculture. This contribution up to now was voluntary and compulsory payments should not be brought in by the back door or in any sort of disguised manner.
Let’s see if the farm organisations who are on the ICBF board will come out and oppose this move. It is my view, in light of differences between farm breeders and ICBF, that we need to have a long hard look at how the ICBF is funded and whether it’s value for money I will be contacting the Minister and departmen this week to clarify excatly what the situation is and I will be looking for straight answers.
I will update people on the situation again next week, but in the meantime farmers should contact the various farm organisations to stop this money being taken out of of the pockets of farners. There was a choice before, but if this plan goes ahead it will be compulsory.