With Cheltenham unlikely to go ahead (as I thought), I took to scanning the bull catalogues last weekend.

I was amazed to see that smaller outfits Eurogene and Dovea AI seem to be leading the charge on sexed semen. Now I’m no expert, but by the looks of it they have by far the best teams of sexed high-EBI sires available.

It is surprising that farmer-owned co-operative organisations Progressive Genetics and Munster Bovine are not leading the charge on sexed semen.

It’s also ironic, as Eurogene and Dovea have always been the ones biting at the heels of the ICBF.

Remember neither Eurogene nor Dovea have sitting board members in the ICBF and I understand the former would have to fork out a six-figure sum to get in the door.

The irony is reinforced as the industry has been trialling sexed semen for years – led by Progressive and Munster – yet it seems the smaller entities in the breeding fraternity are leading the charge to bring this technology to farmers.

Maybe I’m reading this wrong and the Munster and Progressive chiefs are waiting in the long grass for the new IVF technology that is tipped to supersede sexed semen.

I understand a new laboratory in Moorepark is being built to help carry out research on this technology as we speak.

Conspiracy theory

The alternative conspiracy theory is the AI companies want to hold on to the higher premium unsexed product.

Again, it’s hard to lay all the blame at the door of the AI companies because Sexing Technologies, based in the US, has the upper hand, holding the only set of keys to the best semen sorting technology.

If it were to set up a sexing laboratory in Ireland, it has set the minimum investment very high. Eurogene and Dovea, I understand, bypass this by sending their best EBI bulls over to the Cogent stud in the UK on working holidays.

Maybe we should also be asking questions of the Department and Minister for Agriculture.

Should they be subsidising the use of AI to counter the stock bull and then further incentivising the use of better AI?

Better genetics could solve the much talked about calf challenges, climate change, emissions, water quality – and on and on.

While we see all sorts of grants for slurry tankers, there are no measures in TAMS to support the use of new breeding technologies.

To get this over the line it might be worth the AI companies employing whatever lobbying organisation was retained by the organisers of the Chelthenham Festival.

After all, safeguarding the go-ahead for an event that is attracting over 60,000 people per day into a town that had a confirmed COVID-19 case the day prior to the white flag being raised must go down as one of the greatest political strokes in history.

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