Carlow District Court has overturned two compliance notices imposed on John Fitzgerald after finding that Department of Agriculture sampling at his duck farm failed to follow mandatory biosecurity procedures.
The notices, issued on August 1 and 2, 2024, followed an investigation into a rare outbreak of Salmonella Hessarek. Authorities had linked three suspected human cases through food tracing to Fitzgerald's farm. Of 14 samples collected from three duck houses on July 25, five tested positive for Salmonella Hessarek and four for Salmonella Typhimurium.
The notices required measures including recalling duck eggs, publishing trade notifications, stopping egg sales and restricting movement of ducks from the premises.
However, Judge Catherine Hayden found significant problems with how the official samples were collected. Department procedures required trained officers to follow stringent biosecurity measures, including specified use of protective equipment, gloves, hand washing and measures designed to prevent cross-contamination between poultry houses.
The court was not satisfied with the evidence of the two sampling officers about when overboots were put on or whether gloves were actually worn. Neither gave evidence of wearing the required face mask or respirator, and the court found that the sampling fell far short of the Department's own protocol.
Scientific evidence strongly linked the Salmonella Hessarek found in human cases with that detected in the farm samples: only one allele differed across approximately 2,000 examined in the bacterial genome. But one Department expert acknowledged that his conclusions assumed the samples had been properly collected.
Judge Hayden held that compliance with the sampling procedures was an integral and mandatory part of the regulatory process, rather than a technical formality. Given the defects, she found it was unreasonable for the Department not to arrange fresh sampling by appropriately trained officials.
The court concluded that the opinions underpinning both compliance notices were based on fundamentally defective sampling. Both appeals were therefore allowed.