WHAT is happening to Dan Brennan's Kilkenny farm is a mystery, and it is news. Last Tuesday, Dan Brennan travelled to Brussels to put his case in front of the European Union petitions committee.

"Of course I was nervous, " says Brennan, who addressed the committee for four minutes. "You ask any farmer to go, you take him out and put him in a situation like that."

But the reception was enthusiastic. The previous 34 petitions had been on the monotonous side. When his turn came, Brennan spoke first.

Then came his veterinary practitioners, Tom Slevin and Michael Lamb, and then Mary White, local councillor and deputy leader of the Green Party, who proposed the idea of a petition to Brussels. The atmosphere at the petitions committee was galvanised.

"It was a savage debate, " says Brennan approvingly. "You know, it was like when a good song comes on at a disco - everyone got involved. It ended up taking 50 minutes and the committee had to go on a break afterwards."

More than that, the Polish chairman of the committee pledged then and there to visit Ireland to walk the Brennan farm.

The petitions committee had better be in good heart when it arrives at Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny. Because a walk around the Brennan farm is enough to chill the blood, even of an ignorant urban dweller.

It is a 170-acre farm, lying across the breast of a hill, and the lower 45 acres provide a good view of the nearby Ormonde brick factory. No link whatsoever has been established between the Ormonde brick factory - which is monitored by the Environmental Protection Agency, and operates under licence from the same organisation - and the nightmare at Brennan's farm.

Factory The Ormonde brick factory, owned by CRH, closed before Christmas because, the factory stated, it had too much stock. Indeed, the factory yard contains a city of bricks. Its 100 workers were laid off until the beginning of March. A Dublin man at the factory referred the Sunday Tribune to Drury Communications, a public relations firm.

Walking the farm, you are shown a pen of young calves, and beside them a pen of hulking great cows who could be the mothers of the young calves.

"They're the same age, " says Brennan. The big cows - like the calves, one year old - have been brought into the farm for yet another controlled experiment.

There have been many controlled experiments here, some of them funded by Brennan himself.

This experience has cost him dear, although he doesn't want to talk about the money. "It's not the money, " he says.

One of his vets, Tom Slevin, told the European petitions committee that in 40 years of practice he had never seen anything like it. Slevin looks at the pen of stunted one-year olds and says calmly:

"They are severely damaged. This is the only farm in Ireland with these symptoms."

There is bitter criticism here for the laboratory services of the Department of Agriculture, for the department itself and for the Environmental Protection Agency. After one controlled experiment, in which feed and stock were brought in, and some of Brennan's stock were sent to another farm, the department refused to accept the results because the cattle had not been weighed in advance.

Brennan has seen weight loss in his cattle, seen them grow at less than half the national average, and has had milk yields plummet. "They shed the weight as if you had shrunk them, " says Brennan.

All around the lower section of the farm, hazel, ash and holly trees are dying. Holly trees are normally evergreen but here they are bare-branched in some sinister autumn - often just on one side of the tree. Most frighteningly of all, Brennan's milk and beef are still accepted into the food chain.

"They won't refuse it unless there is a reason, " says Brennan, who has four young children aged between seven and 12. Milk is routinely tested for a narrow range of substances like antibiotics, lactose and proteins. No other other tests have been done on Brennan's milk.

MEPs Kathy Sinnott and Marian Harkin came to the petitions committee to support him, as did Liam Aylward, Kilkenny MEP. He is full of praise for Teagasc and for his vets, and for councillor White. She told the petitions committee "that the statutory authorities had failed Dan Brennan and that was why he was coming to Europe, because it was another court of appeal". The European Commission said it was going to ask Ireland why it responds to only 10% of the questions the commission puts to it.

Mystery So far what has been happening on the Brennan farm is a mystery, but less of a mystery to some people than to others. John Innes of the University of Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has edited a book called Air Pollution and the Forests of Developing and Rapidly Industrialising Nations. In response to a query from the Sunday Tribune, Innes had this to say: "It is difficult to judge this situation from a distance, but everything you describe, from the presence of a brick factory to the problems with cattle and the one-sided damage to trees, is consistent with fluorine injury. This is an extremely wellknown problem that has been around for a long time."

The EPA placed a monitor on the Brennan farm in January 2006, after requests from Brennan which began in August 2005. The monitor was there for only a matter of weeks and Brennan's vets, Tom Slevin and Michael Lamb, were critical of the EPA in this instance when they appeared before the petitions committee in Brussels. Brennan says the damage and weight loss to his cattle is intermittent, but when it comes it is universal. In other words, all cattle, regardless of age, lose weight even though they don't appear ill. Some tests for fluorine conducted on the farm have registered at the higher end of the normal range.

The brick factory has been operating in Castlecomer since 1969, and a spokesman points out that its production peaked in the 1970s and 1980s.

Brennan has been experiencing difficulties for about 10 years. Could it be that he is a bad farmer, with poor husbandry? His vets say no. Could it be something from the old mines at Castlecomer? For the first time, Brennan looks angry. "The mines were the other side of Castlecomer. Do you think a farmer would go to Europe without that being checked?"

Last autumn, before the factory closed, there were health concerns for some of its workers.

After investigating, a cancer specialist from the Health and Safety Authority told the trade union, Siptu, that there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

A spokesperson for Drury Communications, acting for Ormonde Brick, said that emissions monitoring at the factory exceeded that outlined by the EPA in guidelines for the granting of an Integrated Pollution Control licence. "Fluorides are monitored every minute of every day, " he said. "And results are placed in the company records, for the EPA. Since 2001 the EPA have been very frequent visitors to the factory, in unannounced visits which take place three or four times a year."

What is happening at the Brennan farm is still a mystery, but have the right questions been asked? Have they been asked for long enough and consistently enough to stand up to European scrutiny?

The beaten holly trees are a sad sight. "'Tis sad, " says Brennan. "Tis terrible sad on the cattle."

We look at the newborn calves, glistening black and white in their baby pens. Beautiful. "Poor little fellas, " says Brennan. "They'll never grow."