BRUCELLOSIS, a disease which causes abortion in cows and heifers, is "sweeping through the country's herds", the annual general meeting of the Irish Veterinary Union heard at the weekend.
Mr Pat Mescill, a conference delegate, told the meeting that the fact that animals do not have to be tested before moving them was spreading the disease.
He said that diseased animals were passing freely through the country because of the present system and he warned that this would have a disastrous impact on disease levels.
He feared that farmers who suspected they had brucellosis in animal now quickly brought it for slaughter to a factory rather than risk being tested and having the herd restricted.
Mr Sean O'Sullivan, a Kerry vet, said that levels of the disease were rising sharply in his county. He said the disease had increased a hundredfold from 1989, when there were only 14 cases in the national herd.
He said that, when an outbreak of the disease was identified, the Department of Agriculture; should make restriction orders on areas, not on adjoining herds, as it now does.
The meeting heard a number of allegations from the vets that pharmacies were selling prescription only medicines directly to farmers.
A Wexford delegate, Mr John Vaughan, said there was no enforcement of the Animal Remedies Act.
Vets' registers were constantly being checked, but pharmacies were not.
"You can go into any chemist's shop and get what you want. It's a total sham," he said.
The outgoing president of the union, Mr Tom Hanley, called on the Department to circulate all farmers with a leaflet telling them they must, under the Act, keep a register of all drugs used on the farm.
There was general condemnation of the Russian ban on beef from three counties.
Mr Hanley said it was a "fiasco" and would be very difficult to administer. The Russian demands did not make sense.
However, it is the customer who decides, and the customer will decide even more in the future. That is why we need a quality assurance scheme," he said.
There was a call too on the union executive to investigate means of regularising the operation of animal welfare bodies offering veterinary services.
Mr Tom Mullaney, of the Dublin/Wicklow branch, said there was now a proliferation of these organisations offering services once a week and then going away for the rest of the week".
He also asked the union to ask the Veterinary Council for guidance on the ethics of "cosmetic surgery". Some vets refused to dock dogs' tails, others did not.
The a.g.m. also discussed a motion from the Louth branch asking the executive to review participation in the TB Forum in view of the continuing campaign "of media hostility to the profession by the IFA".
The general secretary, Mr Pat Brady, accused the IFA of breaking an agreement with the union and refusing to "draw a line in the sand" when the vets agreed to operate the privatised scheme.
For the IFA, he said, the new scheme had been an unmitigated disaster, and it had run a vicious campaign in the media at the beginning of August.
It had miscalculated the position regarding veterinary fees and seemed to regard seeking payments for services rendered as "greed and extortion", said Mr Brady.
The union, he said, would not he drawn into a public slagging match and, in relation to the TB Forum, he thought the IVU should remain in it and use some of its sub committees to promote the quality assurance scheme.