{"id":57770,"date":"2026-07-31T15:20:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/fivemiletown-review-into-wild-west-style-shooting-of-more-than-50-cattle\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T15:20:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T15:20:19","slug":"fivemiletown-review-into-wild-west-style-shooting-of-more-than-50-cattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/fivemiletown-review-into-wild-west-style-shooting-of-more-than-50-cattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Fivemiletown: Review into &#8216;wild west&#8217; style shooting of more than 50 cattle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">A review is being carried out into an incident which saw 51 cattle being shot dead in a field, with some of it visible to members of the public.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The cull took place in land near Fivemiletown in County Tyrone last month and it was carried out by the Department of Agriculture Environment and Rural Affairs&#8217; (Daera) Humane Slaughter Team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sinn F\u00e9in councillor Eugene McConnell said that while there may have been valid reasons for the farm animals to be culled, the public way it was carried out was &#8220;disturbing&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The department said it was carrying out a court order following a previous animal welfare conviction of the cattle owner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A spokesperson for Daera said the court directed that the defendant be deprived of the ownership of all farmed animals and ordered the destruction of the animals. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But now fresh questions are being raised over how the cattle cull operation was carried out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><i class=\"ssrcss-xbdn93-ItalicText e5tfeyi2\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Warning: This article contains images of dead animals that some may find distressing <\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At a recent Mid Ulster Council meeting, reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), it was described as a &#8220;wild west scene&#8221; by McConnell, who was at the site of the cull.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A Daera spokesperson added: &#8220;During the operation, people in the area became aware of activity at the site, with a noticeable increase in local traffic on the adjoining county roads and a number of people gathering to intentionally observe the operation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Unfortunately, due to disruptions by a small number of members of the public, this operation took significantly longer than it should have taken.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking to BBC News NI, McConnell added: &#8220;I have never seen anything like it. It felt very inhumane, and it was extremely upsetting for those who came across the scene.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Gun shots could be heard miles away, some people were just driving past, so questions have to be asked; did this cull have to take place in such an open way, surely there were other options?&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c62xdkmj2eno?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A review is being carried out into an incident which saw 51 cattle being shot dead in a field, with some of it visible to members of the public. The cull took place in land near Fivemiletown in County Tyrone last month and it was carried out by the Department of Agriculture Environment and Rural [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2426,16170,1553,875,3292,3050,1337],"class_list":["post-57770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-cattle","tag-fivemiletown","tag-review","tag-shooting","tag-style","tag-west","tag-wild"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57772,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57770\/revisions\/57772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}