No Ordinary End: The Fivemiletown Cattle Cull

We had a small suckler herd on our farm when I was growing up. Some of our cows, bought as heifers when I was very young, stayed with us for many years and had names. They were docile and enjoyed a good back scratch. Daisy, rather unusually for a suckler herd, was a Friesian and the first cow I can remember. There was also Bluebell, a Belgian Blue cross, Buttercup the Charolais, Primrose, a Simmental cross, and the rather less imaginatively named Spotty Face, also a Simmental cross.

My Dad was good to his animals, and they were well cared for. He had a soft heart, but a farmer’s pragmatism. Farming is hard work, and we weren’t wealthy, but if the vet needed to be called, the vet was called.

It was a working farm, though, and cattle came and went. I hated knowing when one was going to the abattoir and always felt relieved when they went to Newtownhamilton Mart instead, where we sometimes went with our Dad on Saturdays.

We had bullocks at certain points too. Most were friendly, curious creatures, but we once had a wild one that charged at me when I was no more than ten. I still remember running and diving into an old, disused hen-house for safety, my heart pounding. I think it went to the abattoir after that. Dad was worried about our safety, but also about simply selling a dangerous animal on to someone else.

Moving cattle around our own farm required the whole family and could be stressful. Many a cross word was spoken if someone wasn’t paying attention, or there was a perceived lack of common sense. Our farm was on the hills, divided by hedges into lots of small, interconnecting fields. Dad didn’t like ripping out hedges in the way so many farmers did, and for many years gates were absent or improvised. This meant lots of “minding gaps” whenever cattle were being moved.

I know the dangers when cattle are “raised”, or stressed. I remember one animal coming home from the mart and, when she came out of the trailer, she was so raised that she jumped a fence and broke her leg. Cattle are big, powerful and sometimes unpredictable animals. Moving them isn’t always as simple as opening a gate or putting them into a trailer.

I was shocked when I first read that fifty-one cattle had been shot in fields on a farm near Fivemiletown in Co Tyrone. I grew up around cattle and farming, and I’d never heard of anything like it. A cull in this manner, on this scale, is highly unusual.

It seemed so bizarre to me that I looked for more details.

DAERA had been involved with the farm for several years, and what officials encountered makes for grim reading. The judge described photographs showing “knee-high slurry”, “foul and contaminated feeding troughs” and dead animals beside living ones. Approximately 33 animal carcasses were found, while 29 animals had previously been euthanised because of their condition.

By the time the case came to court, however, the farmer’s solicitor said the remaining cattle, mainly cows and calves, were in a “reasonable state”. The farmer was disqualified for life from keeping animals, and a deprivation order was made, meaning he could no longer retain ownership of the remaining cattle.

He was given an extended period of three weeks to sell or transfer the cattle. For whatever reason, when that time ran out, only a small number had left the farm, while fifty-one remained.

When that deadline expired, an operation to cull the remaining animals began on the morning of 29 June. The decision had been taken to shoot the cattle where they were, in the fields.

DAERA has said that moving the cattle elsewhere was considered, but veterinary staff didn’t consider it a viable option. The cattle were described as “semi-feral”, and there were no suitable, safe facilities to gather and contain them. Their temperament, the stress involved in handling them and their suitability for transport also presented difficulties. Areas within the fields were chosen to minimise public view, although the shooting couldn’t be hidden completely.

As the operation was underway, local people became aware of what was happening. A neighbouring farmer approached DAERA staff about potentially buying some of the cattle still alive. The shooting was stopped to allow this to happen, but the attempt to move the cattle went badly. After a prolonged attempt to get them into a lorry, some ended up on the public road. By that stage, the cattle were stressed, and those remaining were shot. Fifty were euthanised on 29 June, with the final animal euthanised the following morning.

I have mixed feelings on the whole thing.

Firstly, the farmer is culpable for keeping his animals in appalling conditions. It was this that led to the situation in the first place.

But could more have been done to find buyers before the deadline? And once a buyer did come forward, did the failed attempt to move the cattle that day really mean another, more organised attempt couldn’t have been made the following day?

I know the situation couldn’t be allowed to drag on indefinitely. The farmer had already been given three weeks to sell or otherwise dispose of the cattle. But there’s something about what happened that day that feels, to me, a bit like bureaucracy just needed to get the thing done.

At the same time, I’m aware that the alternatives weren’t straightforward and could themselves have presented risks.

Still, there is something particularly graphic and disturbing about 51 cattle being shot in fields, with some of what was happening visible to members of the public. It can only be justified if there really was no other viable option.

There’s some cognitive dissonance in our reaction, of course. Most of us who eat meat accept that animals are killed for food, but we rarely have to see it happening. The uncomfortable reality is that death is part of livestock farming. An abattoir keeps the killing safely out of public view, but that doesn’t necessarily make the experience any better for the animal.

But these animals weren’t being killed for food. Their carcasses were collected and disposed of at the Department’s expense the following morning.

I can understand why farmers are angry. For them, it felt like bureaucracy needlessly killed 51 cattle, and did so in a particularly shocking way. Moving difficult animals is something most of them have done at some point, and I suspect many will instinctively think there must have been another way. Relations between parts of the farming community and DAERA are already strained, and this whole episode has widened that fault line further.

I’m less convinced by some of the opportunistic politicking, as I see it, towards an Alliance minister. At the protest at Stormont, Carla Lockhart led calls for Andrew Muir to resign over the handling of the operation.

Quite separately, Muir has spoken of receiving numerous threats to his life and has reported being assaulted. Whatever disagreements there are over what happened at Fivemiletown, that’s indefensible.

An independent review is now looking at the planning, decision-making and implementation of the operation. I’ll be interested to see what it finds.

I still don’t know whether there was another way, but I’m not yet convinced there wasn’t.