MADAM,

IT is unfortunate that I feel obliged to write to you regarding more reckless decisions being made by HSI.

First, the question must be asked as to why these massive price increases are being imposed on the Irish Breeders by HSI? Do HSI need to make money quickly? Are they trading recklessly? This question needs to be asked given that breeders and producers were left begging for their own prize money for months this after the competitions took place. Have they all even been paid yet?

Are HSI trying to abolish the ISH Studbook and all it has stood for since 1972? If these new prices go ahead, do they realise that it is now unaffordable for breeders to register their animals thus making breeders go elsewhere or worse, break the law? It is crippling breeders.

Who made this decision? When was the last Breeding and Production Council meeting? How has new management been allowed to make such poor and uneducated decisions without guidance from anyone on that council or past knowledgeable staff that has any genuine understanding of breeding and the lives or challenges breeders are facing? Why is there no staff left that care or understand?

Is it not HSI’s responsibility to service the breeders not breeders to service HSI? They clearly do not know how and they also lack the common sense to embrace the old staff that did.

Is it likely that the new board members were not furnished with the full facts and implications. Who is briefing the new board?

I can only assume that the Department of Agriculture cannot allow such bad management of this national Studbook. I think it’s time we demand change and go back to the breeders’ entities of both the NIHB and the IHB. The breeders were truly understood and represented appropriately, thus ensuring that the integrity of the ISH Studbook was safeguarded for future generations.

The general feeling is that the Dept of Agriculture cannot stand by and allow HSI to torture and inflict such penalties on Irish breeders because of their own bad management.

Irish breeders are crying out to DAFM to help!

Yours etc

John McKibbin

Leestone road

Kilkeel

Co Down