The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) has published the brucellosis compensation rates for Northern Ireland for June 2025.
Farmers are compensated for losses if animals have to be slaughtered under DAERA’s brucellosis prevention and eradication control programme.
The compensation payable, for reactors and negative in contacts for which notice of intended slaughter is issued in June 2025 will be either:
- 75% of the animal’s market value;
- 75% of £2,632 (75% of £2,932 in the case of pedigree animals).
Valuations on animals are carried out by a DAERA livestock valuation officer and, in the case of a disagreement over the DAERA valuation, a second individual valuation is carried out by an independent valuer.
DAERA
Separately DAERA has advised that from Sunday (June 1) bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) herd restrictions are being introduced for herds with animals over 30-days-old that have not been tested for BVD.
New BVD legislation, which came into force in Northern Ireland on February 1, 2025, introduced a number of BVD control measures in a phased manner.
Initially targeting herds with positive animals these measures will now be extended from Sunday to introduce movement restrictions on herds with animals over 30 days old that have not been tested for BVD.
These measures will initially be applied if there are 20 or more untested animals in a herd, with the threshold for the application of restrictions being reduced over the next 12 months.
Herd restrictions will prohibit all moves into the herd, and all moves out except to direct slaughter or for disposal.
The Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Andrew Muir, has warned that in Northern Ireland there are a “small cohort of farmers that are not testing all their animals for BVD on time, some of which may be infected with the virus, therefore posing a risk to their herd and to other herds.”
The minister said: “I therefore urge all farmers to test their calves promptly and test any BVDU status cattle in their herd either by using a supplementary ear tag or through blood sampling carried out by their own vet.
“Only through the concerted efforts of all livestock keepers will we continue to make progress towards the eradication of this disease in Northern Ireland.”
