Farmers support bid to eradicate M bovis
Local farmers are backing moves by the Government to attempt to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis.
Cabinet made a decision on Monday to push ahead with ridding New Zealand of the cattle disease, which is on a scale never faced before.
Phased eradication could involve up to 190 properties out of more than 20,000 dairy and beef farms. It is expected that an additional 126,000 livestock will need to be culled on top of the 26,000 already earmarked for slaughter.
Nelson dairy farmer Julian Raine, of Oaklands Milk, said he’d been getting calls from concerned farmers but was ‘‘fully supportive’’ of an eradication attempt.
‘‘It’s just another thing we don’t need in this country.’’
Raine said he operated a ‘‘closed herd system’’, so wasn’t hugely exposed, but he did have neighbours with cattle, so he was checking fencelines and ensuring there was good communication about cattle movements.
‘‘We don’t have it, we certainly don’t want to get it, and we’re taking every measure we possibly can to ensure that we don’t get it.
‘‘I just hope there is good support for those people who do have it through no fault of their own, and that they’re being supported by their community.’’
It wasn’t just up to the Government to support affected farmers, Raine said – the wider community needed to get behind them too.
‘‘Everyone from the shopkeeper, the garage owner, the stock agent, through to the next-door neighbour in the dairy industry, and the beef industry, supporting their own.’’
It was important that community members kept an eye on affected farmers who would be going through ‘‘quite traumatic experiences’’ if their cattle needed to be culled, he said.
‘‘It’s incredibly sad, but I can see the picture here, and the big picture is we must try and eradicate it.’’
He was hopeful that those who may have brought the disease into New Zealand would be found out, and held to account for the cost to the dairy industry and the taxpayer.
Golden Bay Federated Farmers
‘‘We do have a number of other infectious diseases in our national herd that were kind of let go.’’ Golden Bay Federated Farmers president Wayne Langford
president Wayne Langford said he had received comments ‘‘both ways’’ on the decision, but most farmers he had spoken with were keen on an eradication attempt.
‘‘Everyone’s a little bit nervous, of course, and it’s easy to be in favour of it when we’re not in an area that’s being heavily infected or affected.’’
It was a case of the country grabbing the chance to eradicate the disease while it could, Langford said.
‘‘We do have a number of other infectious diseases in our national herd that were kind of let go, and now we don’t have the opportunity to get rid of them.’’
He said that while there hadn’t been any confirmed M bovis cases in the Nelson Tasman area, the issue was as significant for the region as anywhere else in the country.
‘‘We do have a number of properties being monitored currently, and we’ve all got our fingers crossed they don’t come up positive.’’
His advice to local farmers was to ‘‘actually sit down around your coffee table and strategically think about what impact this will have on your farm’’.
‘‘That includes where your breeding bulls are going to come from, where you’re going to graze your cows over the winter, where your supplementary feed comes from, all those sorts of things. Sometimes the best way to get rid of the stress of the situation is to create a plan to deal with it.’’
Farmers could get comprehensive information from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) website or the Dairy NZ website.
Last month, MPI said there was one farm in the Nelson Tasman area under a Notice of Direction, which meant it had received what MPI believed were high-risk forward cattle movements off an infected or suspect property.