I am actually physically sick!

Why don't YOU start a petition both here and on Facebook as you have all the facts, Names and specifics? If you do that, I and many others would definitely sign.

Kev.

Leaving aside the horrid situation of the destruction of these animals,I hope you are not left out of pocket Ian. I assume the exporter had to clear your funds before shipping the order.
Have you been onto them to try and get the money refunded,as the facts are,as you have explained,that he has routed the shipment very poorly. This is obviously down to human error,whoever let the shipment come via a port that does not have the neccessary clearing facilities must hold the blame. I would have thought that an exporter,who must have a considerable amount of experience shipping his products,would be only too well aware of the situation. I personally just cannot understand how this was let happen(I'm referring to the shipping route). Please keep us updated with the progress,and facts of the case.

Ian. I'm only catching up on the posts now and I'm so upset finding out what has happened. The needless destruction of all those animals. Regardless of who is to blame, this should never have happened.

Contingency plans should be put into place by the Dept. of Agriculture in the event of anything like this happening so the welfare of the animal is protected at all times.


I was so looking forward to checking out the new stock too.

Fiona

Bloody red tape and the world is getting worse for it on a daily basis.

Sorry to hear such bad news.

If it had been 3000 puppy dogs they wouldn't have put them to sleep.

Chin up.

Could they not have done something in the North - its in the UK?

The most important fact is this.This country is goin to the poxy dogs.If the minister cared he would have done something.The shipment had health certs which would have been approved in germany so the shipment should not have been destroyed.They were tropical fish and so were not a threat to ourselves.I offered full quarantine it was not entertained.We have capable fisheries inspection officers who could have handled the shipment quite professionally i know them personally.This was a mistake a human error.We have no back up plan so then we should not be handling the cargo in question.The fish were left to freeze for 24 hrs in a cold empty shed.That is cruelty to animals.Someone on here if not the whole itfs should report this to the dspca for what it is.....this is 3000 cases of cruelty not one it is cruelty to discus...cruelty to malawis ....cruely to mekongs etc....i posted up the ministers email on an earlier post has anybody mailed him yet.....friends of Aquatic village on fb have.....u guys should direct ur questions to him.....he will say rules are rules and basically.....who are u piss off and go collect your dole we are busy makinf a balls of everything...fish are gay!
IAn

Why won't you start a petition?

Kev.

Ian, i feel sorry that so many fish were lost, but, do you not feel that you should really be the one shouldering at least part, if not all the responsibility here? seeing as it was your company that ordered the fish? not once have i seen you accept any responsibility for the sequence of events, you seem to be blaming everyone bar yourself, just my thoughts, not trying to start a ranting session!
joe

ipcompto wrote:

.i posted up the ministers email on an earlier post has anybody mailed him yet.....friends of Aquatic village on fb have.....u guys should direct ur questions to him.....he will say rules are rules and basically.....who are u piss off and go collect your dole we are busy makinf a balls of everything...fish are gay!
IAn

Isn't that kind of shooting yourself in the Foot? Anyone reading this would say " fair enough then, what's the point? "

Kev.

Ian if you start this campaign i'll sign it and i'm sure others will too, but it was against you this was done, so therefore you should spearhead it, did anything come of the Irish Times reporter who came to you, have you been onto Joe Duffy etc to state what happened to you, you start this campaign and you will get support, but the ball is in your court as its your issue not the forum members, if you put a petition on your website and post a link here and do the same on your facebook page i'm sure your followers and people like us who have responded to your troubles will all sign, and then that can be presented officially on all our behalves by YOU who was directly affected by this calamity
Seamus

+1 with what seamus said, you do have our backing ian but at the end of the day if you want our help and backing it is up to you to get the ball rolling. if you're serious about getting answers, changes and for someone to stand up and take responsibility for decisions made then you need to take charge and give this whole thing a direction in which to proceed. whatever decision you make the members here will support it.

wayne

I think people are missing the point here.....we buy fish the shipper ships the fish we pay the charges.Its not about blaming anyone.The arguement is centered around the way the dep of ag handled the situation they have no contingency plan even for human error.It is the shippers responsibilty to make sure his stock reaches their destination.The dept left the shipment sit in the cold for 24hours before destroying them that is the arguement not apportioning blame....not once have i mentioned blaming anyone for the mistake because it was an error...so lets keep focussed here.....horses can be cross border checked so why cannot other animals the resources were squandered in other areas so resource arguements wont count...the dept should have let us quarantine the fish and handle them for welfare purposes that is the arguement and it aint no rant.....stay focused...
Ian

I don't think it is a case of people missing the point here, there are as far as i can see two seperate issues and being in the one thread and interwoven in each post you make are probably the reason for confussion.
To my mind issue one is the case of this particular shipment of fish that did not follow procedures and therefore were not allowed entry.
my questions regarding this are , when did you find out about the route? surely you were not only told of this when the shipment were flying through the air, would you not have been given an airwaybill detailing the flight route? would you not have had to inform the airline that you were prepared to accept the shipment? would you not have checked all was right after sending off your hard earned cash?

issue two is the problem you have with the law as it stands,(correct me if i am wrong)
breaking the law is not the way to highlight a grievance, in this case the real losers were the fish, a cruel way to make a point if that was the case (which i am not saying it was!!)
Why would any department need contingency plans if people followed the rules. there seem to have been the option of shipping the fish to London, to be inspected, ( which you could argue was a contingency plan!!)maybe there would also have been the option of a water change, maybe not, but london is not too far away, surely another couple of hours on a flight there and back would have been better than leaving the fish for 24 hours in an unheated shed while you looked at other options?
Ranting and slagging off the country is not very constructive, the country is as it is because of you, me and everyone else in it, we elected the policitians, parties, voted yes here there and everywhere, like it or not we have a country which is as it is because of most of us sailing through life with our heads up our own arses, if you want change, any change you need to make it happen, waffleing and ranting will get nothing done,PLAN, ORGANISE PROTEST, PETITION ETC ETC ETC ETC
change does not happen on its own, if you want to do something about the lack of an inspection post here for ornamental fish, get organised, make your case, find support..... it will not happen by itself
joe

Though I am sorry to hear so many fish have had to bite the bullet, I am surprised to see that you, with so many years of experience in the fish keeping industry and importing fish, didn't spot that the routing of the fish shipment was not compliant with the law.

I am also surprised to read that a fish exporter would not document himself about the rules and route the shipment accordingly.

Pity these poor fish have had to die needlessly. (

Any updates or progress on this?

Have you got onto the supplier,he has obviously messed up big time,as I assume you put on the permit that the first European point of entry would be Frankfurt or Heathrow,so how did he send the fish via Dubai?

A serious mess up costing the life of all these fish,so hope he coughs up.

I am really curious about all of this, first a wave of comment and concern and now silence, what is the state of play? When is the Times article due?

Kev.

Hi Ian,

Can you PLEASE let us what is happening re your destroyed delivery? You have been very quiet about it since your last information.

Do you intend pursuing it? Have you formulated a Petition??

Kev.

yo dude...
The fish were destroyed the next day. I posted up the ministers email for interested parties to email complaints to him.I asked members here to report him to the dspca.I have signs up in my shop explaining what happened and even calling him a pri$%!

I cannotchallenge him directly or he will revoke my liscence...as i have already mentioned earlier so if you think petitioning him is the correct course then lets do it and get the itfs involved...i think this would be more productive...what do u think?u interested in organizing a pettition?
Ian

Moved the last 2 messages to this thread

ipcompto wrote:

yo dude...
The fish were destroyed the next day. I posted up the ministers email for interested parties to email complaints to him.I asked members here to report him to the dspca.I have signs up in my shop explaining what happened and even calling him a pri$%!

I cannotchallenge him directly or he will revoke my liscence...as i have already mentioned earlier so if you think petitioning him is the correct course then lets do it and get the itfs involved...i think this would be more productive...what do u think?u interested in organizing a pettition?
Ian

I agree but I believe YOU should construct the Petition and then I'll happily sign it, I will also happily post it on my Ffacebook page and ask my friends to follow suit, .

Whatever happened to to the Times interview?

Kev.

quote

''I cannotchallenge him directly or he will revoke my liscence''

I do not understand what makes you believe that the minster will revoke your import licence if you make a complaint , you have complained about him here, you say you have signs in your shop calling him vile names and i assume you probably have posted comments about him elsewhere on the internet......
so on what grounds do you believe that your licence will be revoked if you actually complained directly to his department? Not being a fan of a minister or a member of a particular party are NOT grounds for your licence being withdrawn.
Can you state exactly why you believe this
tks
joe
the reason i am asking these questions is I have read through this thread two or three times now and it is just not adding up, maybe I am missing something, but it just annoys me when I cannot make sense of a story, I feel either I am a bit thick, that only part of the story is being posted or the facts as printed are false or misleading.
can you start at the begining and post a simple straight forward timeline of events
starting with you selecting fish from the list from your supplier, then going through the process of organising the import
tks
joe
On the petition fromt, I would also be interested in reading it when you have it drafted with a view to deciding as to whether or not i could put my name to it

Been a long while since Ive posted here but after browsing through earlier and coming across this I thought I would pipe up. Fist off, this situation is almost unbelievable. As the guys said earlier, had the fish been dogs or cats or some other higher vertebrate, you can be sure they wouldnt have been culled without so much as a bat of an eyelid. Not that it was the vets fault, and in fairness they would have died slowly in those crates anyway but things should never have been allowed to get to that point in the first place. When the mistake was realised, and it was confirmed that there was live animals in those crates, all steps should have been taken to ensure minimal stress and harm came to them, wether it be sending them to the Uk or Germany on the next flight out or holding them in suitable storage, and then contacting AV. The particulars of money and who is to blame could have been sorted at a later stage.
Regarding the issue of fesr of loosing your license. You must have a shed load of evidence snd a massive paper trail detailing this issue from start to finish. Even what has been posted here about this shipment and any other related posts would become relevant if he/she tried bully tactics and things went legal. Any minister with a half decent circle of ginnets crossing his t's and dotting his i's for him would think twice about putting the squeeze on a small business in such a fashion these days, the eye is on them like never before. I hope you at least get your few quid back in the end Ian. As far as dealing with the red tape, two words...fight this.

Jay

I didnt want to be the one to post this but I think it has to be asked:

When did you know the routing of this shipment?

Is this not something that someone in your line of business would do on a almost weekly basis IE Import stuff, be it dry goods, plants, mammals, reptiles, fish? and if so what changed?

Did you know, before the shipment left its last port before here that there "might" be a problem and decided to take a chance on getting them through?

Did you have the opportunity to send the shipment straight back to source, or a clearance enabled port as soon as you learned of the problem? and if so why not?

answers to these and i'm sure many questions would be helpfull in deciding on support / petitions etc.

We need to make a fully informed decision on this topic if you want full support.

Pat.

Here we go again.....
I found out about the shipment on the morning of arrival as i was driving to work...my clearing agent rang me

the route for the flights and details are sent from shipper to agent they were done over the weekend so were not picked up by the agent until the morning of flight

we cant turn airplanes around.

it was not possible to send fish to frankfurt or heathrow fish had already been travelling 26 hours...
i tried to get them to uk....it would take two days return so that was not a possibility.

i offered to quarantine they said no way

i spent all day trying to persuade them ....dead end


the airline should not have flown the cargo to dublin they broke the rule.

the point is the department of Agri were not in the slightest bit interested in saving the cargo under any circumstances even though they made exceptions in the past for other importers....

ian
#

I recon that "Minister" Hogan has other things on his mind at the present time with his Racist opinions being used to force local issues, and to take innocent people to court over household charges.

There is a fuzzy area as to which Ministerial remit this comes under (from what I gather, even government departments are unsure), but it looks like it may well be Hogan’s.

ian

So, again, why will you not put together a Petition? What happened after the Press Interview? Have you contacted same to ask if it was/will be printed?

Kev.

Ian, your explainations make absolutly no sense, someone fecked up, who is not made clear by you, in your last post it would seem to be your agent, not doing his job........ but somehow I doubt that as these shipping agents are shit hot at their job, saying that they are on the ball on regulations and rules regarding shipping anything would be an understatement.
Lets just look back at the timeline in your last post.... you say it was done on the weekend so no one saw the error, but your fish were not shipped until 10.30 am on tuesday ( based on you saying they were arriving a 12.30 on wed, and were 26 hours in transit at that stage)... what happened in between that and the weekend ?
take this shipment a step back further , to your own door step and it becomes even less credible of a story
when you decided to import these fish you would have had to apply for a permit stating all the species details quantities etc etc etc. this is correct, is'nt it?
i just read a copy of an import application form, there is quite a lot there, a couple of pages in total...
lots of info is required, from the basic who are you, company name, where are the fish comming from etc etc
to section 7 on the Health Certification where it clearly states the rules and regulations for the importing of fish from outside the EU.
And back a step further in section 5. 'TRANSIT DETAILS ' the VERY first section you would have had to fill out was 'Airport of first entry into Europe', 'then the date of arrival', then the 'port of entry into ireland'.....
so how the hell did you not know of the route when you would have had to state it back when you were looking for permission to import the fish in the first place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
to me it is clear who is responsible for the destruction of 3000 fish
and what in the name of god would make you think for one moment that they would have handed over these fish to you to quarantine in your premises, out of their control!
PLEASE correct me if i am wrong here somewhere
joe

Totally agree with the last few comments,I have read and re-read the whole sorry saga but there is something fishy in the tale here???? even though it saddens me to hear of so many fish destroyed there are a lot of unanswered questions. hmmmmm methinks he doth protest too much....

i stopped reading this thread a while ago because i for 1 am not starting a petition or considering putting my name to a petition that was not draughted by the people directly affected!! its coming across like disputing the facts of this thread is done for the satisfaction and ammusement of some which i couldn't bother to read. fair enough it didn't have to end the way it did and i feel for those directly affected but tbh i've more to worry about as do others. i think ian made a valid point in his last post (although maybe not intended that way) but were goin still down the shitter as people are writing here which imo is more important. instead of putting anything into this i could put y name to more important petitions.
anyways i'm off to learn german because before ye know it it'll be our new 1st spoken language but sure who the hell here cares???!!!

StILL WAITING FOR INFO !!

It's all gone extremely quiet

Kev.