Disease claims 1000 more cows

A further 1000 cows will be culled in South Canterbury due to the cattle disease Mycoplasma Bovis.

According to the Ministry for Primary Industries, that will bring the total cull number up to 5000.

On Wednesday, MPI confirmed another farm in South Canterbury was infected with the disease, bringing the total infected properties to eight.

Two farms in the Waimate District were placed under restrictions last week after it was suspected they could be infected with the disease.

MPI later confirmed one of those farms had tested positive for the disease, which causes udder infection (mastitis), abortion, pneumonia, and arthritis and was present in the United States and Britain.

Ministry for Primary Industries incident controller David Yard said 1000 cows were on the infected farm that tested positive for the disease on Wednesday.

‘‘The process will not change. Any cattle on an infected premise will be culled.’’

Properties under restrictive place notice could test negative for the disease but could still test positive at a later time, he said.

There were 23 properties which had restrictive place notices of which eight were confirmed to be infected with the disease, Yard said.

‘‘Animals on notice will receive extensive testing. Ultimately if they test negative we will consider lifting restrictions, we won’t necessarily lift it completely.

The disease could be dormant within the animal and show negative during testing but after ‘‘cattle get stressed the disease becomes prevalent when they shed skin cells’’, Yard said.

To date three people had applied for compensation under the Biosecurity Act.

To be eligible for compensation from the ministry, MPI had to exercise powers under the Biosecurity Act

The Government would only pay for verifiable losses, Ward said, adding there was no blank cheques.

Yard said MPI was confident after 40,000 tests the disease was still contained in South Canterbury.

‘‘We have done over 40,000 tests to date. We have tested a whole range of things – mastitis milk samples, blood tests and swabs.

‘‘We have detected nothing outside the region. Given information to date, we have some level of confidence the disease is contained in South Canterbury.’’